Bruce and Cat: Dollmaker's Island
by The-Riddler95
Summary: Selina is gone. Amanda Waller strikes a mysterious new deal with Wayne Enterprises. A cryptic mad scientist shows up in Gotham asking to buy Bruce Wayne, and the consequences for not selling are horrific. In some of the worst days the city has ever seen, who can save the city from the Dollmaker?
1. The Dollmaker Lives (Sequel Version)

**It's finally here! This is a sequel to Bruce and Cat: the Court of Owls, but in case any of you haven't read it, another version of this chapter will be published that will be easier to understand. This version is the extended version and has a lot of tie-ins that won't make any sense if you haven't read the first one.**

 _"_ _You won't kill Selina Kyle."_

 _"_ _And why is that?"_

 _"_ _Because you need me."_

Finally, Bruce had another nightmare to replace the one where his parents died. The exact look in Selina's eyes bounced around his head like a cannonball, shining with tears and screaming his name as the world around him blurred.

He jolted upright in the dark of the night, panting and sweating. The pain shot up from his stomach, making him double over. His hand met the scar on his abdomen, the shape only reminding him of the Court of Owls. Bruce closed his eyes, and suddenly his mind transitioned to Selina. She told him she had to leave the city to get away from the mayhem, and that she would be back when everything was better. She told him that four months ago.

He couldn't stop thinking about her every day. Every single day for those four months, every idea Bruce had was a hind thought to Selina. What if the Court of Owls had found her, or what if she was hurt or dead? She could be halfway across the world, or across the street back in Gotham. What could she be doing, and was she even missing him?"

Alfred burst into the room, asking what was wrong. For a while, he had ignored Bruce's nightly screaming. He had nightmares about his parents so often, Alfred learned not to make a deal of it in case Bruce didn't want to talk. Then the Talons had kidnapped him in the middle of the night, and Alfred suddenly had to burst into the room again when he heard screaming.

"Was it the nightmares again, Master Bruce?" he asked, his voice interchangeable between a tender compassionate query, and a scold.

Bruce shook his head. "I'm fine Alfred. Go back to bed."

Alfred stepped into the bedroom. "Well, Master Bruce, I'm afraid I cannot do that. It just happens to be seven in the morning and the whole community is going doolally over your birthday gala. If I were you, I would at least a tad more obliged for what everyone's doing for you."

"I never asked for a gala, Alfred."

"I'm perfectly aware of that, but the entire city is throwing one for you, and there's a difference between being stoic and just being bloody rude."

Alfred was about to leave when he turned back and his voice became tender. "The nightmare; it wasn't about your mum and dad, was it?"

Bruce looked up and shook his head. "No, it wasn't."

Alfred knew what he meant. He turned his back and left the room, Bruce noticing him turning on the lights in the hallways. Bruce was never like the other kids he had met. He didn't like company or parties. He would much rather spend his fifteenth birthday in the mansion with Alfred, maybe something quiet. His parents had thrown birthday balls for him, but they were only precursors for a warm dinner in front of a fireplace. Then, his dad would've brought out a cake he had baked and sing to him while Bruce blew out the candles and hugged his parents.

How could he forget? This was going to be the first birthday without his parents.

Bruce looked out his window, longing for Selina to appear and tap on the window with a smile. The ochre sun was beginning to come up over the horizon, marking the beginning of his day. Bruce heaved himself out of bed and headed straight to the bathroom to shower and brush his teeth. Changing into a vest and pair of dress-pants, Bruce met Alfred downstairs looking through some papers.

"Master Bruce," Alfred yelled to him coming down the stairs, "I've received a phone call from a Wayne Enterprises representative. They want you to attend a meeting. Maybe it would be healthy for you to grab some air, or if you're not feeling up to it, I can use your wound as an excuse."

"What meeting?" Bruce asked, down the stairs.

"They didn't say, except it concerns Arkham Asylum."

Bruce sat down at the table Alfred was at. "Alright. Is there breakfast?"

"I'm afraid we don't have much in the cooler. I can make you a sandwich; we have the meat and greens and all that lot."

"Thank you, Alfred."

Alfred left for the kitchen, and Bruce picked up the files Alfred was reading. All of it concerned his birthday. There were guest lists and food checklists and layers of preparations and special guests. A week ago, when Bruce was informed there was going to be a party, he accepted on the condition Selina Kyle would be allowed in no matter what. That was solely based on the hope she would be back in time for his birthday. Now it didn't look like she would be.

When breakfast was over and Bruce had gotten dressed, Alfred pulled up one of the family cars and drove Bruce to Wayne enterprises for the meeting. Out of the window, Bruce could see Gotham city recovering from the Owls attack. The city was healing nicely. With the help of a few outside cities, the buildings were being rebuilt and the citizens were slowly renewing their lives. Out of the chaos, Gotham was actually becoming something better.

Alfred led Bruce in through the automated doors of Wayne Enterprises and through the marble-white halls and offices of the company of tomorrow. The offices were all bustling with people running back and forth in black suits, looking like they were trying to find something. Bruce was led up to a conference room on the top floor through the elevator, and a worker opened the door for them with a smile.

Inside, a woman sat at the end of the conference table with two people in suits behind her. She wore a blue suit and tied her short black hair behind her head in a bun. She looked maybe thirty, but stern and unmoving. She motioned for Bruce to sit down.

Bruce pulled out a chair at the opposite side of the table from her and Alfred stood behind him. Bruce crossed his arms on the table and said, "Hello."

"Hello, Mr. Wayne." said the woman. "My name is Amanda Waller. Your parents were good friends of mine."

"You knew my parents?" Bruce asked.

Waller nodded. "Before they died, I was set to open up a new deal with them concerning the Martha Wayne wing in Arkham Asylum. Now that the chaos is set and done, I would like to reopen it with you."

One of the men standing behind Waller held up a folder, then walked over to Bruce and set it on the table for him. Bruce opened the folder and saw two mugshots with information written beneath them. They were from Arkham Asylum and being held in the Martha Wayne wing.

"Those are Arkham inmates." Waller said. "Feng Yu Huan set four apartments on fire within six weeks in Gotham and is now residing uncomfortably in Arkham Asylum. Landis Bolton was dubbed the Exterminator due to his affinity for insects and use of poison gas for his crimes. I want to move them both to a new facility better suited to hold them."

"I don't understand." Bruce furrowed his eyebrows, closing the folder. "Prison transfers happen all the time. Why did you need the consent of Wayne enterprises?"

"Once Huan and Bolton are moved to the new prison, they will be drafted in a new program I'm creating where their unique talents will be used for good."

"Huan sets things on fire and Bolton kills with poison gas. What good can their talents be used for?"

Waller frowned, as if annoyed. "Oh there are plenty of things, but the program is mostly precautionary."

"So why do you need me to sign? Wouldn't an official representative of Wayne Enterprises be more authentic?"

"Like I said, I was good friends with your parents. Before what I didn't know was going to be our last meeting ended, they told me that you were a hundred and ten percent the person they trusted if they couldn't be reached. The official representative of Wayne enterprises will of course be the one to sign, but I still need a witness signature. Asking anyone else would be a disgrace to the grave of a noble family."

Bruce read over the mugshot files. Both of them had committed major crimes and both of them were serious criminals.

"How do you plan on keeping them in line? Huan and Bolton can't possibly be agreeing to this."

"Indeed." Waller sat up in her chair. "Rest assured, Mr. Wayne. Wayne Enterprises has given us the resources to have guns on them at all times and make sure they don't cause any more death."

Bruce nodded. Waller didn't look like she was going to say more than that. Having two dangerous criminals out of Gotham city never hurt, and to force them to do good would be the best possible end for them. But something about Amanda Waller was saying there was something else behind the plan. It seemed too perfect.

Alfred noticed him hesitating and whispered to him. "It's already signed. If you don't sign it, someone else will. This is all screwed around; all Waller really needs is the posterity."

Bruce turned back to Waller. One of her people walked over and handed him the contract and a pen, and pointed to where he was supposed to sign. Everything else was already filled in. Bruce already knew what to do. He grabbed the pen and filled in the name.

 _Bruce Wayne._

Waller nodded. "Thank you, Mr. Wayne. I think this will be our last meeting."

Bruce stood and Alfred followed him out of the room and into the elevator back to the car. Alfred got to the driver's seat and Bruce sat behind him. With a whir, the car started and the ride back to Wayne manor began.

Bruce was quiet for the drive back, his mind still on Selina and Waller's deal. Waller was so unfeeling and butch. Bruce knew from experience that she had to be hiding something, but he didn't know what. He barely knew what Waller was going to do to the inmates she was taking or what was going to happen to them.

Then there was Selina, once again in the back of his mind. Somehow, Bruce had managed to associate a prison transfer with her. He had okayed a transfer for human beings he didn't even know to some other prison he knew nothing about and permitted who knows what to happen to them. He told himself he was just being melodramatic, but it was impossible for him to do anything and not associate it with Selina.

Perhaps he was just being melodramatic. It wasn't an option for him anymore.

The car pulled up next to Wayne manor. Alfred told Bruce to go inside while he did something with the car. It came to the point where he couldn't bear it anymore and headed straight up to his bedroom to collapse on the bed with his heart in his stomach like a broken egg.

How the hell was he supposed to attend a birthday party in his honor? It was the most gratuitous thing that had ever happened to him, and it was the first public thing to happen after he had damned half the city to death by the claws of the Talons. And Selina was gone, and he let her go with a billionth of the emotion he would feel in the months to come.

He should have held her longer. He should have grabbed her waist and pulled her close and he should have kept her in his arms as long as she could before she had to go. Instead he held her gloved hand with a passing glance and watched her back as she disappeared below his peripheral and climbed into the night. That's all she would remember of him, and that's all he had of her. He didn't even know he cared that much about her. Even when he was stabbing himself in the stomach, he thought it was because of his parents, not because he cared about her. But now everything was clear.

Bruce lay there and stared at his window, tearing down the curtain so he would be able to see Selina from a block away if she was coming. He watched Alfred bring a hot lunch to his room and sit it down on the tabletop next to his bed, and he watched as the steam subsided and the temperature of the meal dropped, him still staring out of the window. He watched Alfred come back in with dinner on a tray and turn back seeing his ice-cold lunch still there. He knew better than to get Bruce to eat something.

Bruce stared out the window, his back now sweating from the heat of the bed and sheets, his entire body wrenching for movement.

"Selina," he spoke to the air, but he spoke gently and passionately, as if Selina could hear him. "Where are you?" Selina could be in a sewer right below him, or in Midway like she had mentioned, or dead, stealing jewels from his mom and dad. That was the worst of it. As he watched the sun reach its peak, then begin its nightly descent, and finally disappear behind the smog and towers of Gotham city.

 _Tap, tap._ The sound came from the windowsill just as Bruce's vision began to blur and glaze, unable to move. It was what Bruce was waiting for all day, and he barely knew what to say. He didn't know what to think or do, until Alfred's voice reverberated from the ground floor and shook him awake.

"Bruce!" Alfred yelled, and the glass of the window burst open. A man stepped through, dressed in black and wearing what was maybe a leather mask made to look like a patchwork human face. Bruce could tell Alfred was having his own fight downstairs most likely with another man.

Alfred had taught him how to fight. So did Selina. Once, he managed to pin her to the ground and she refused to tell him if she was going easy or not. Bruce did know some moves though, and no one was coming to his rescue now.

The man got closer to him, and Bruce got out of bed into the fighting stance Alfred taught him. As an arm reached out to grab him, Bruce took a swing and missed, the man being too far away. He got closer though, and Bruce's second attempt met his stomach.

The man lurched back, the air knocked out of him, when Bruce reeled from the hit. He had punched harder than he ever had, and the pain surged with his pulse in his arm. He had to recover fast. A kick to the leg made the man wince, but didn't do much else.

Bruce got back into his fight stance and got ready for the man to get back up. Bruce's next jab missed, and as his fist flew through the air, the man grabbed his forearm and pulled, sending Bruce tumbling to the floor on his side.

On the ground, Bruce tried to wrap his leg around the man's and trip him, but he was too heavy. All it made him do was stumble a bit out of stance, and Bruce got the time to get back up. His fists up, the man had enough. A blow to the side of the head made Bruce's vision blur and another to the side made him yell in pain. The recovering stab wound didn't help.

Suddenly, the bedroom door swung open so fast Bruce thought it would come off its hinges, and outside stood another man, tall and lean, armed with a flamethrower and gas tank on his back. A black mask covered his face, but Bruce recognized the black suit and red cape. A news story about Montoya and Allen putting away a psychopath named the Firebird played in his head, and the file Amanda Waller had shown him about Feng Yu Huan jogged his memory.

Before he had a chance to panic, Firebird shot his weapon and a stream of white-hot fire shot from the flamethrower at the man in the mask, forcing him to lunge backwards with his right side on fire. He must have known he was outmatched, because he took a double take and jumped out the window, not making a sound.

Firebird took off his mask, revealing a man maybe in his forties with a white scar running across his forehead. He looked at Bruce.

"Nice work, kid." he said. "We sure took care of him."

Bruce looked at him, confused. "What do you mean? Who was that?"

"I don't know, but he works for someone called the Dollmaker. My comrades downstairs are just finishing with his friend."

"Comrades?"

Firebird laughed, deactivating his flamethrower. "My name is Firebird, professional lunatic. I'm supposed to be protecting you, and I was in because I got to set a guy on fire."

Bruce stepped away from him, towards the door. "You're a killer."

"Hey, don't get me wrong. I like setting things on fire way more than most people. If we were meeting randomly on a street corner somewhere, your butler would be sweeping you up in an ashtray right now. But, sometimes you've got to do things you don't want to."

Bruce recognized Landis Bolton, the Exterminator, running up the stairs and meeting Firebird. He grabbed his shoulder and whispered, "Huan, we're secure. He's downstairs with Puppeteer right now."

Firebird nodded, and then turned to Bruce. "You got balls, kid. Come on."

Not knowing what to think, Bruce followed the two criminals down the stairs and into his living room, the two chatting in front of him the whole time. Alfred was downstairs monitoring an unconscious man in a leather mask, assisted by another person. Bruce assumed she was a criminal, but he hadn't seen her before.

"Hey, his friend got away." Firebird said. "I couldn't have done it without this kid; we really showed him who's in charge." He spoke with a sarcastic tone, as if he was trying to make a child feel proud.

The Puppeteer wore a costume that looked like ten different outfits had been torn apart and stitched back together into one. Pieces of buttons and fabrics and leathers hung from the jacket, and the top part of her face was covered in a mask. The bottom looked scarred. Bruce couldn't tell her age, but she looked about thirty.

"He could have told us something, next time get some words out of the son of a bitch." She chided, arms crossed.

"Hard to make them talk when their lips have been burnt off." Firebird held up his weapon proudly, but the others seemed exasperated.

Bruce spoke up, gaining the attention of the room. "I don't understand, what is this?"

Firebird sighed. "Is this not the kid that signed for this? I'm almost sure I saw _Wayne_ on our waivers."

Bruce didn't say anything, so Firebird continued.

"This morning, Amanda Waller came down to our cells in Arkham and asked us to join this thingy. She called it Task Force X, but she just wanted bad guys to do her dirty work for her. Protecting you was our first assignment."

Of course it was. Bruce didn't feel like asking what was keeping the criminals in line. He didn't think he would get a valid answer from any of them. Instead, he asked what the men in the leather masks were in his house for.

"That's what this guy is going to tell us." the Puppeteer said, nudging the man on the ground with her foot. She gave the other two a gesture, and the three of them left, probably to take the man to interrogation or prison.

Bruce was left staring at Alfred. "What do you think they wanted?"

"I don't know." Alfred whispered, in case the criminals could still hear them. "Best not to think about it too much I suppose. There are a lot of chaps on the street that need money."

Bruce nodded.

"Although," continued Alfred, "We really must get that bloody window fixed. Is it true, what that fire bloke said? You fought a grown man?"

"Yes. I couldn't beat him though."

"Well that's all fair and good. Even getting off without a scratch is an accomplishment. Maybe get some rest, Master Bruce?"

Bruce began to head back up to his room. Maybe he did think too much, but he couldn't leave it alone. Firebird mentioned the Dollmaker, so he must want something from Wayne manor to send goons in. Or was it him? And if it was him, could they have known about Selina?"

 **Where the Court of Owls was a psychologically dark storyline, this will be much more physically dark and is going to start pushing at the T-rating. Just a fair warning, but if you watch Gotham, I think you can handle this. Next up, Bruce's birthday party and Selina's return.**


	2. The Dollmaker Lives (Cut Version)

**It's finally here! This is a cut version of the story for those who haven't read the first story in the series, Bruce and Cat: the Court of Owls. If you have read it, go read the sequel version. It'll be more informative for you. For this version, all you have to know from the first one is Bruce fell deep in love with Selina and she left Gotham to get away from the mayhem, promising to return.**

She told him she had to leave the city to get away from the mayhem, and that she would be back when everything was better. She told him that four months ago.

Bruce jolted awake, sweating and panting in the dark of the night. He couldn't stop thinking about her every day. Every single day for those four months, every idea Bruce had was a hind thought to Selina. What if she was hurt or dead? She could be halfway across the world, or across the street back in Gotham. What could she be doing, and was she even missing him? Why was he even missing her?

Alfred burst into the room, asking what was wrong. For a while, he had ignored Bruce's nightly screaming. He had nightmares about his parents so often, Alfred learned not to make a deal of it in case Bruce didn't want to talk. Then Bruce had gotten chased by assassins, and Alfred suddenly had to burst into the room again when he heard screaming.

"Was it the nightmares again, Master Bruce?" he asked, his voice interchangeable between a tender compassionate query, and a scold.

Bruce shook his head. "I'm fine Alfred. Go back to bed."

Alfred stepped into the bedroom. "Well, Master Bruce, I'm afraid I cannot do that. It just happens to be seven in the morning and the whole community is going doolally over your birthday gala. If I were you, I would at least a tad more obliged for what everyone's doing for you."

"I never asked for a gala, Alfred."

"I'm perfectly aware of that, but the entire city is throwing one for you, and there's a difference between being stoic and just being bloody rude."

Alfred was about to leave when he turned back and his voice became tender. "The nightmare; it wasn't about your mum and dad, was it?"

Bruce looked up and shook his head. "No, it wasn't."

Alfred knew what he meant. He turned his back and left the room, Bruce noticing him turning on the lights in the hallways. Bruce was never like the other kids he had met. He didn't like company or parties. He would much rather spend his fifteenth birthday in the mansion with Alfred, maybe something quiet. His parents had thrown birthday balls for him, but they were only precursors for a warm dinner in front of a fireplace. Then, his dad would've brought out a cake he had baked and sing to him while Bruce blew out the candles and hugged his parents.

How could he forget? This was going to be the first birthday without his parents.

Bruce looked out his window, longing for Selina to appear and tap on the window with a smile. The ochre sun was beginning to come up over the horizon, marking the beginning of his day. Bruce heaved himself out of bed and headed straight to the bathroom to shower and brush his teeth. Changing into a vest and pair of dress-pants, Bruce met Alfred downstairs looking through some papers.

"Master Bruce," Alfred yelled to him coming down the stairs, "I've received a phone call from a Wayne Enterprises representative. They want you to attend a meeting. Maybe it would be healthy for you to grab some air, or if you're not feeling up to it, I can use your wound as an excuse."

"What meeting?" Bruce asked, down the stairs.

"They didn't say, except it concerns Arkham Asylum."

Bruce sat down at the table Alfred was at. "Alright. Is there breakfast?"

"I'm afraid we don't have much in the cooler. I can make you a sandwich; we have the meat and greens and all that lot."

"Thank you, Alfred."

Alfred left for the kitchen, and Bruce picked up the files Alfred was reading. All of it concerned his birthday. There were guest lists and food checklists and layers of preparations and special guests. A week ago, when Bruce was informed there was going to be a party, he accepted on the condition Selina Kyle would be allowed in no matter what. That was solely based on the hope she would be back in time for his birthday. Now it didn't look like she would be.

When breakfast was over and Bruce had gotten dressed, Alfred pulled up one of the family cars and drove Bruce to Wayne enterprises for the meeting. Out of the window, Bruce could see Gotham city recovering from the Mafia wars. The city was healing nicely. With the help of a few outside cities, the buildings were being rebuilt and the citizens were slowly renewing their lives. Out of the chaos, Gotham was actually becoming something better.

Alfred led Bruce in through the automated doors of Wayne Enterprises and through the marble-white halls and offices of the company of tomorrow. The offices were all bustling with people running back and forth in black suits, looking like they were trying to find something. Bruce was led up to a conference room on the top floor through the elevator, and a worker opened the door for them with a smile.

Inside, a woman sat at the end of the conference table with two people in suits behind her. She wore a blue suit and tied her short black hair behind her head in a bun. She looked maybe thirty, but stern and unmoving. She motioned for Bruce to sit down.

Bruce pulled out a chair at the opposite side of the table from her and Alfred stood behind him. Bruce crossed his arms on the table and said, "Hello."

"Hello, Mr. Wayne." said the woman. "My name is Amanda Waller. Your parents were good friends of mine."

"You knew my parents?" Bruce asked.

Waller nodded. "Before they died, I was set to open up a new deal with them concerning the Martha Wayne wing in Arkham Asylum. Now that the chaos is set and done, I would like to reopen it with you."

One of the men standing behind Waller held up a folder, then walked over to Bruce and set it on the table for him. Bruce opened the folder and saw two mugshots with information written beneath them. They were from Arkham Asylum and being held in the Martha Wayne wing.

"Those are Arkham inmates." Waller said. "Feng Yu Huan set four apartments on fire within six weeks in Gotham and is now residing uncomfortably in Arkham Asylum. Landis Bolton was dubbed the Exterminator due to his affinity for insects and use of poison gas for his crimes. I want to move them both to a new facility better suited to hold them."

"I don't understand." Bruce furrowed his eyebrows, closing the folder. "Prison transfers happen all the time. Why did you need the consent of Wayne enterprises?"

"Once Huan and Bolton are moved to the new prison, they will be drafted in a new program I'm creating where their unique talents will be used for good."

"Huan sets things on fire and Bolton kills with poison gas. What good can their talents be used for?"

Waller frowned, as if annoyed. "Oh there are plenty of things, but the program is mostly precautionary."

"So why do you need me to sign? Wouldn't an official representative of Wayne Enterprises be more authentic?"

"Like I said, I was good friends with your parents. Before what I didn't know was going to be our last meeting ended, they told me that you were a hundred and ten percent the person they trusted if they couldn't be reached. The official representative of Wayne enterprises will of course be the one to sign, but I still need a witness signature. Asking anyone else would be a disgrace to the grave of a noble family."

Bruce read over the mugshot files. Both of them had committed major crimes and both of them were serious criminals.

"How do you plan on keeping them in line? Huan and Bolton can't possibly be agreeing to this."

"Indeed." Waller sat up in her chair. "Rest assured, Mr. Wayne. Wayne Enterprises has given us the resources to have guns on them at all times and make sure they don't cause any more death."

Bruce nodded. Waller didn't look like she was going to say more than that. Having two dangerous criminals out of Gotham city never hurt, and to force them to do good would be the best possible end for them. But something about Amanda Waller was saying there was something else behind the plan. It seemed too perfect.

Alfred noticed him hesitating and whispered to him. "It's already signed. If you don't sign it, someone else will. This is all screwed around; all Waller really needs is the posterity."

Bruce turned back to Waller. One of her people walked over and handed him the contract and a pen, and pointed to where he was supposed to sign. Everything else was already filled in. Bruce already knew what to do. He grabbed the pen and filled in the name.

 _Bruce Wayne._

Waller nodded. "Thank you, Mr. Wayne. I think this will be our last meeting."

Bruce stood and Alfred followed him out of the room and into the elevator back to the car. Alfred got to the driver's seat and Bruce sat behind him. With a whir, the car started and the ride back to Wayne manor began.

Bruce was quiet for the drive back, his mind still on Selina and Waller's deal. Waller was so unfeeling and butch. Bruce knew from experience that she had to be hiding something, but he didn't know what. He barely knew what Waller was going to do to the inmates she was taking or what was going to happen to them.

Then there was Selina, once again in the back of his mind. Somehow, Bruce had managed to associate a prison transfer with her. He had okayed a transfer for human beings he didn't even know to some other prison he knew nothing about and permitted who knows what to happen to them. He told himself he was just being melodramatic, but it was impossible for him to do anything and not associate it with Selina.

Perhaps he was just being melodramatic. It wasn't an option for him anymore.

The car pulled up next to Wayne manor. Alfred told Bruce to go inside while he did something with the car. It came to the point where he couldn't bear it anymore and headed straight up to his bedroom to collapse on the bed with his heart in his stomach like a broken egg.

He should have held her longer. He should have grabbed her waist and pulled her close and he should have kept her in his arms as long as she could before she had to go. Instead he held her gloved hand with a passing glance and watched her back as she disappeared below his peripheral and climbed into the night. That's all she would remember of him, and that's all he had of her. He didn't even know he cared that much about her. Even when he was stabbing himself in the stomach, he thought it was because of his parents, not because he cared about her. But now everything was clear.

Bruce lay there and stared at his window, tearing down the curtain so he would be able to see Selina from a block away if she was coming. He watched Alfred bring a hot lunch to his room and sit it down on the tabletop next to his bed, and he watched as the steam subsided and the temperature of the meal dropped, him still staring out of the window. He watched Alfred come back in with dinner on a tray and turn back seeing his ice-cold lunch still there. He knew better than to get Bruce to eat something.

Bruce stared out the window, his back now sweating from the heat of the bed and sheets, his entire body wrenching for movement.

"Selina," he spoke to the air, but he spoke gently and passionately, as if Selina could hear him. "Where are you?" Selina could be in a sewer right below him, or in Midway like she had mentioned, or dead, stealing jewels from his mom and dad. That was the worst of it. As he watched the sun reach its peak, then begin its nightly descent, and finally disappear behind the smog and towers of Gotham city.

 _Tap, tap._ The sound came from the windowsill just as Bruce's vision began to blur and glaze, unable to move. It was what Bruce was waiting for all day, and he barely knew what to say. He didn't know what to think or do, until Alfred's voice reverberated from the ground floor and shook him awake.

"Bruce!" Alfred yelled, and the glass of the window burst open. A man stepped through, dressed in black and wearing what was maybe a leather mask made to look like a patchwork human face. Bruce could tell Alfred was having his own fight downstairs most likely with another man.

Alfred had taught him how to fight. So did Selina. Once, he managed to pin her to the ground and she refused to tell him if she was going easy or not. Bruce did know some moves though, and no one was coming to his rescue now.

The man got closer to him, and Bruce got out of bed into the fighting stance Alfred taught him. As an arm reached out to grab him, Bruce took a swing and missed, the man being too far away. He got closer though, and Bruce's second attempt met his stomach.

The man lurched back, the air knocked out of him, when Bruce reeled from the hit. He had punched harder than he ever had, and the pain surged with his pulse in his arm. He had to recover fast. A kick to the leg made the man wince, but didn't do much else.

Bruce got back into his fight stance and got ready for the man to get back up. Bruce's next jab missed, and as his fist flew through the air, the man grabbed his forearm and pulled, sending Bruce tumbling to the floor on his side.

On the ground, Bruce tried to wrap his leg around the man's and trip him, but he was too heavy. All it made him do was stumble a bit out of stance, and Bruce got the time to get back up. His fists up, the man had enough. A blow to the side of the head made Bruce's vision blur and another to the side made him yell in pain. The recovering stab wound didn't help.

Suddenly, the bedroom door swung open so fast Bruce thought it would come off its hinges, and outside stood another man, tall and lean, armed with a flamethrower and gas tank on his back. A black mask covered his face, but Bruce recognized the black suit and red cape. A news story about Montoya and Allen putting away a psychopath named the Firebird played in his head, and the file Amanda Waller had shown him about Feng Yu Huan jogged his memory.

Before he had a chance to panic, Firebird shot his weapon and a stream of white-hot fire shot from the flamethrower at the man in the mask, forcing him to lunge backwards with his right side on fire. He must have known he was outmatched, because he took a double take and jumped out the window, not making a sound.

Firebird took off his mask, revealing a man maybe in his forties with a white scar running across his forehead. He looked at Bruce.

"Nice work, kid." he said. "We sure took care of him."

Bruce looked at him, confused. "What do you mean? Who was that?"

"I don't know, but he works for someone called the Dollmaker. My comrades downstairs are just finishing with his friend."

"Comrades?"

Firebird laughed, deactivating his flamethrower. "My name is Firebird, professional lunatic. I'm supposed to be protecting you, and I was in because I got to set a guy on fire."

Bruce stepped away from him, towards the door. "You're a killer."

"Hey, don't get me wrong. I like setting things on fire way more than most people. If we were meeting randomly on a street corner somewhere, your butler would be sweeping you up in an ashtray right now. But, sometimes you've got to do things you don't want to."

Bruce recognized Landis Bolton, the Exterminator, running up the stairs and meeting Firebird. He grabbed his shoulder and whispered, "Huan, we're secure. He's downstairs with Puppeteer right now."

Firebird nodded, and then turned to Bruce. "You got balls, kid. Come on."

Not knowing what to think, Bruce followed the two criminals down the stairs and into his living room, the two chatting in front of him the whole time. Alfred was downstairs monitoring an unconscious man in a leather mask, assisted by another person. Bruce assumed she was a criminal, but he hadn't seen her before.

"Hey, his friend got away." Firebird said. "I couldn't have done it without this kid; we really showed him who's in charge." He spoke with a sarcastic tone, as if he was trying to make a child feel proud.

The Puppeteer wore a costume that looked like ten different outfits had been torn apart and stitched back together into one. Pieces of buttons and fabrics and leathers hung from the jacket, and the top part of her face was covered in a mask. The bottom looked scarred. Bruce couldn't tell her age, but she looked about thirty.

"He could have told us something, next time get some words out of the son of a bitch." She chided, arms crossed.

"Hard to make them talk when their lips have been burnt off." Firebird held up his weapon proudly, but the others seemed exasperated.

Bruce spoke up, gaining the attention of the room. "I don't understand, what is this?"

Firebird sighed. "Is this not the kid that signed for this? I'm almost sure I saw _Wayne_ on our waivers."

Bruce didn't say anything, so Firebird continued.

"This morning, Amanda Waller came down to our cells in Arkham and asked us to join this thingy. She called it Task Force X, but she just wanted bad guys to do her dirty work for her. Protecting you was our first assignment."

Of course it was. Bruce didn't feel like asking what was keeping the criminals in line. He didn't think he would get a valid answer from any of them. Instead, he asked what the men in the leather masks were in his house for.

"That's what this guy is going to tell us." the Puppeteer said, nudging the man on the ground with her foot. She gave the other two a gesture, and the three of them left, probably to take the man to interrogation or prison.

Bruce was left staring at Alfred. "What do you think they wanted?"

"I don't know." Alfred whispered, in case the criminals could still hear them. "Best not to think about it too much I suppose. There are a lot of chaps on the street that need money."

Bruce nodded.

"Although," continued Alfred, "We really must get that bloody window fixed. Is it true, what that fire bloke said? You fought a grown man?"

"Yes. I couldn't beat him though."

"Well that's all fair and good. Even getting off without a scratch is an accomplishment. Maybe get some rest, Master Bruce?"

Bruce began to head back up to his room. Maybe he did think too much, but he couldn't leave it alone. Firebird mentioned the Dollmaker, so he must want something from Wayne manor to send goons in. Or was it him? And if it was him, could they have known about Selina?"

 **Where the Court of Owls was a psychologically dark storyline, this will be much more physically dark and is going to start pushing at the T-rating. Just a fair warning, but if you watch Gotham, I think you can handle this. Next up, Bruce's birthday party and Selina's return.**


	3. Dollmaker's Deal

Bruce didn't know why he was awake. Lying on his bed in his pyjamas in the middle of the day staring at the window had become a hobby. There was absolutely no reason he should've been awake at all that day, and all he wanted to do was lie on his bed with his mind blank. But that wasn't an option. He knew it wasn't.

He knew what the day was. It was his fifteenth birthday, and the entire city would be at a big Wayne enterprises ball in his honor where they would sing to him and give him presents and congratulate him. He didn't want any of it. Between Selina's disappearance and waking up to the first birthday without his parents, every breath he took became such a chore, Bruce considered not taking any until he died.

The bedroom door creaked open and Alfred's warm face peered through the crack of light. Bruce kept staring at the window that Selina always came in through, and Alfred came to sit on his bed next to him. Bruce didn't say anything, so Alfred took a deep breath and began.

"Happy birthday, Master B." he said, in the most tender voice he could manage. He wasn't very good at it.

Bruce didn't say anything.

Alfred sighed and continued. "You know, when I first saw Miss Kyle, I knew there was something wrong in her."

That peaked Bruce's interest. The pure lack of Selina's name in the past months made him perk his head up at Alfred. Having thought he was doing a good job, Alfred kept on.

"Detective Gordon brought her in the mansion in handcuffs and told me we had to take care of her. Something in me told me she was trouble, but I could never see what. I suppose now I see that she was so similar to you."

"What do you mean?" Bruce asked.

Alfred had gotten Bruce to speak. He was about ready to do a cartwheel, but instead swallowed his pride and kept trying to comfort his master. "When your mum and dad brought you home from the hospital when you were a young'un, I knew you were going to be trouble, same as her. Sure, you're one of the wealthiest people in Gotham and she's a street thief, but you both have so much in common. You're both determined, you don't like people, you're as bull-headed as anyone I've ever seen. I've been close friends with your mum and dad since their early years, and I see so much of them in you two."

Bruce nodded, mumbling a short _thank you_. Alfred actually was making him feel better.

"There's one thing though," Alfred crept closer to Bruce until his hand was on his shoulder. "Just one thing that separates you that accounts for every difference you two ever have. Miss Kyle tends to dismiss the bad in the world and adapts to it, while you always want to change it. That's why she can live with the evil in the world and move on with her life and why you do everything in your power to make it better. That's why she left the city when things got bad, and you stayed to make it a better place. Frankly, both of you have your merits and I don't know which of you I'd rather be."

Another silent period from Bruce.

"I suppose what I'm trying to say, Master Bruce, is perhaps you can learn from each other. From you, she can learn compassion for the world and work to make it a better place to live in. And maybe you can learn from her. You can learn what I've been trying to teach you for the past year, that sometimes bad things just happen. The world isn't always what we'd like it to be, nor can it be, so all we can do is accept it and move on."

Finally, Bruce sat up in his bed and stared Alfred in the eyes. There was no anger or hatred in him, but there was no thought at all. What Alfred said had made him okay with it.

"If her leaving taught you that lesson, it was worth it." Alfred put his hands on Bruce's shoulders, and Bruce collapsed into him for a hug. "Now why don't we take our mind off our worries just for one day, and enjoy what the city has done for you?"

Alfred felt Bruce nodding on his shoulder, and his whispered, "Thank you, Alfred."

When Bruce was ready, Alfred broke the hug and headed downstairs to prepare for the party, and Bruce got up to change into a party suit. He stripped off his blue silk pyjamas and picked out a black Canali tux that Alfred had ironed for him the night before. He stared himself down in the mirror at the other end of the room, his arms behind his back trying to look dapper. He had to look dignified, and affluent to the point of deserving attention. Bruce attempted a smile in the mirror, trying not to look forced.

Okaying the way he looked, he clipped his tie, put on his cufflinks, and started down the stairs to meet Alfred. The butler was putting the final touches on his own suit, rolling up the sleeves and tightening his tie.

"Well, Master Bruce. It's a long drive and we've got plenty of formalities to get out of the way. Shall we get going?"

Bruce said, "Yes. Let's go."

He was about to head to the car when Alfred stopped him. Standing in front of him and fixing his tie to be a little tighter, Alfred's voice turned into a whisper, "Your mum and dad would be so proud of the amazing young man you've become."

Bruce gave a slight nod and looked up. "Well I didn't make the journey alone. As far as dads go, you make a pretty good one."

Alfred's mouth cracked into a grin and so did Bruce's. Alfred patted Bruce's back and led him out to a car, a black Lincoln MKS that suited the party, and began the drive to Wayne Enterprises. Bruce practised his smile in the reflection in the glass window. It was kind of refreshing, not having to think or worry about any of the things that bothered him. He was genuinely happy, blocking out all his bad thoughts. He was ready to face the crowd for his birthday.

It was maybe a twenty minute drive. Wayne manor was on the outskirts of Gotham and Wayne Enterprises was in the very center of the city. Alfred had always said that the Waynes ran Gotham. You'd be hard pressed to drive two minutes through Gotham city and not see the word _Wayne_ on a truck or sign or building or newspaper.

Finally, Alfred drove into the VIP lot and Bruce noticed the limousines flooding the parking lots. The number of people and the lights inside suddenly made Bruce tense again. Alfred looked back at him from the driver's seat.

"You okay, Master Bruce?" he asked.

"Yeah, let's go."

People dressed in the most expensive outfits they owned stopped and stared as Alfred and Bruce made their way through the parking lot. One couple that didn't understand the concept of sound travelling even deigned to point and chuckle, "Look! There's Bruce Wayne!"

Alfred stopped Bruce before he went in the building for one final suit check. They shared a brief smile, and Bruce put on his best happy face when the golden doors swung open and the crowd inside clapped.

Probably the richest people in Gotham were there, all dressed elegantly and eloquently. A chandelier hung from the marble ceiling and twinkled lights throughout the ballroom. There must have been two hundred people in the room, all clapping and beginning to sing. The crowd parted for Bruce to walk down the aisle and to the high rise where he would stand. He tried his best to smile and wave, but it seemed so unnatural for him. Under the sounds of the song, murmurs arose from the crowd.

"Oh my gosh, he's adorable!"

"It's so good to see him out and about, what with his parents gone."

"Didn't he have a girlfriend last time?"

Bruce made his way to the high rise and stood on the height to look out over the crowd. As the song finished and the words were said, Bruce was able to mingle with Alfred in the crowd.

There was more that Bruce didn't like about big crowds. Everyone in the room was a businessman or politician or an illegal trafficker or dirty cop. They had to be to afford to step inside Wayne Enterprises. In the huge crowd full of people in their best suits and dresses, all sipping their champagne glasses and laughing like airheads, no one really knew who anybody was. Every person that crossed Bruce Wayne, either to wish him a happy birthday, or to give their consolation for his parents, or ask him where to get champagne, could've been innocent capitalists that worked their entire lives to get where they were or scumbags that stole and killed. No one would know the wiser in Gotham. It was why Bruce didn't like people.

Bruce half expected Selina to show up in a pretty dress, with her hand outstretched for a dance. Maybe she would sneak in through an air vent or come in through the door while the guards weren't watching. She'd probably be wearing a bunch of jewelry and have her pockets stuffed with money she lifted off of the other guests. It just seemed like something she'd do.

Great. He was thinking about her again.

Alfred snuck up on him and put his arm on his shoulder. "Quite the get-together, isn't it?"

"Yes it is."

"If you want, I can bring you a beverage. As fast as you're sprouting up, you aren't quite old enough for champagne"

Bruce shook his head. "I'm good. Thank you."

"It's in the job description."

"No, I mean for the party." Bruce turned around and smiled at Alfred. "This is really making me feel better. This was just what I needed."

There was a scream from a woman coming from the middle of the ballroom. Alfred had thought someone had drank too much, but he looked over at the podium and saw a man standing on it, surrounded by three others holding machine guns. The men wore masks of leather, identical to those that attacked Wayne manor. A few shots made the entire room go silent, and the man on the podium started to speak.

He was old, skinny with a long face, and wore a white lab coat over a black dress shirt as if it was meant to be classy. He spoke at a normal volume, but with the room silent it was audible.

"Hello, rich people of Gotham city. My name is Francis Dulmacher. I also go by Dr. Dulmacher and very rarely, the Dollmaker. But enough about me. I'm here to wish Bruce Wayne a happy birthday. Where is the little boy?"

It wasn't intentional, but the crowd parted just the tiniest bit and Dulmacher faced Bruce with a smile.

"Bruce Wayne! So happy to see you, look at what a handsome young man you are." said Dulmacher. "It's rare to see a child with your age and wealth not fat or scarred with motorcycle wounds or things like that."

Bruce crept closer, nodding hesitantly.

"What I have is a proposal for the city." The doctor turned back to the rest of the people in the room, all lurching back a bit from intimidation. "I want to buy Bruce Wayne."

Every set of eyes in the room shifted to Bruce, and murmuring started among the crowd. Bruce took a stop back, surprised. The word _buy_ rarely had a positive connotation.

Then there was what set the mass ablaze. Dulmacher proudly faced them and yelled over the crowd, "I'm willing to offer ten million dollars to the city for Bruce Wayne's uninjured, still breathing body."

That was the thing about Gotham city. Any other city would laugh at the offer. Most likely, they would give a cheque to each citizen for fifty bucks and keep the rest for city renovations and healthcare. But not Gotham. In its state of chaos, and the standards for law enforcement precariously low, it could be kept by one person. If Dollmaker gave it to the city, the mayor or mafia would likely keep it all for themselves. Then there was the question of what the mafia could do with ten million dollars.

The crowd got so unruly, the Dollmaker's men had to fire off a few shots. Alfred was ready for the mob to burst into action, but Bruce simply stood there listening to the Dollmaker.

When the people were silent again, Dollmaker started again. "You heard me right, ten million dollars will be flushed into Gotham city if you lot will surrender Bruce Wayne to me. This is all you have to do, and I will give the city the money and we will never see each other again."

"What if we don't?" One gutsy man asked, quietly as if regretting it after the first word.

Dollmaker smiled, as if waiting for that question the entire party. He snapped his fingers and more men came into the room carrying a bag the size of a person, and everyone knew what was inside. The men carried the bag up to the podium and stood on it. They began to unzip the bag.

Half the room screamed in shock and horror. The other half was throwing up. Bruce stood in shock, not knowing what to say. They unzipped it slowly all the way until it was a proud trophy, and it dawned upon Bruce what the men's masks were made of. It looked exactly like the mayor of Gotham city, with the exact same face, height, weight, age, and likeness. It couldn't have looked more like Aubrey James if it was himself.

But it wasn't Mayor James. The Dollmaker had taken at least ten people that each had a body part that looked like Mayor James' and cut them off. Then he sewed them back together into the monstrosity he was displaying as a trophy. Each of the eyes were from different people, sewn together with staples onto someone's nose and someone's mouth, and the entire abomination was attached to the head of someone who was killed for having a head that looked like Mayor James'.

"I am a doctor." Dollmaker announced, over the screams of the people. "I am not a madman. I am a doctor, trying to answer a question that has been bothering me ever since I was a child. It is a simple question, but it involves… other people. Now, my test subjects are currently those I find that dare come close to my island either on boat or on plane. I am not, though, above changing my sample space. How would you like the citizens of this city to go to sleep, then wake up the next morning in a lab to have their eyes removed?"

No one said a word. There was not a sound in the room other than the bigwigs throwing up onto the floor. The doors were locked, made evident by those trying to escape.

Dollmaker simply smirked. "Three days? I'll give the city three days to sell me Bruce Wayne. I have uploaded the location of my island to Wayne Enterprise's main computer. Starting now, at eight PM, you have seventy-two hours, and if Bruce Wayne is not on my doorstep, citizens start disappearing."

With that being said, the Dollmaker and his men left the building, carrying their atrocity with them through the front door like nothing was wrong.

Alfred looked over at Bruce.

"We're leaving now." he said.

Bruce agreed, and the two of them snuck back out to the car while the others were in a frenzy. Bruce swung the car door open as quickly as he could, and Alfred began the drive back to Wayne manor with a skid.

"Dollmaker told the most powerful people in Gotham, Alfred." Bruce yelled over the distance and sounds of traffic. "It won't be long before everyone else knows."

Alfred thought for a minute. "I know. I suggest going back to Wayne manor and getting some rest. I can transport us to our home in the alps within hours if things get violent."

"But if I leave, the people of Gotham get turned into dolls."

Alfred nodded. "Get some rest, Master Bruce. Most likely, there will be a city official we can deal with when we get back home."

There would maybe be a city official. More likely, there would be Firebird, Exterminator, and the Puppeteer waiting for them in the living room. As they drove through Gotham, the city got darker and darker, and Bruce figured the lights were going out in the streets. They arrived in the garage of Wayne Manor and the lights wouldn't turn on when Alfred flipped a switch. That wasn't one of their problems.

Going into the living room, Bruce saw the three criminals in the dark, sitting on the chairs. Firebird stood and stretched his arms. "Look who's being hunted!"

They weren't wearing their costumes, and they seemed comfortable as if it was their own home. Alfred was the first to speak up, "What are you lot doing here?"

"We cut the power to the city." Puppeteer said calmly. "That'll slow down the news of the Dollmaker, but it'll still get out overnight by the grapevine. We have tonight to make a plan."

"We were hoping you would come to the Dollmaker's island with us." Exterminator sighed, his voice almost a breath. "We wouldn't be giving you up, but just discussing terms. We don't intend to give you to the Dollmaker."

Bruce mumbled, "Thanks."

Firebird turned to Alfred, "Why don't you send the little tyke up to bed. This is grownup business."

Bruce got the message. It was nine PM and dark outside anyway, so he headed up the stairs to his bedroom while a conversation started below him. He could make out his name a few times, but not much else. Bruce made his way to his room and turned the knob to push the door open, then half-heartedly jumped onto his bed.

He pulled the covers up and lay there, until he heard a tapping at his window.

He had never moved so fast in his life, darting his head around, eyes mesmerized by the opening window and Selina's legs slipping through. He recognized her scuffed black boots right away, and soon he saw her exactly as she had left. She wore torn black jeans and a black leather jacket, and her hair had barely grown. Bruce sat still, not even breathing, and stared as she made her way through the window until she was standing with her hands behind her back at the windowsill with a slight smile on her face. It was like the last four months never happened.

"Hey, kid." she whispered.

Bruce sat up, shoving his covers off and smiling back. "Hello, Selina."

She giggled at their conversation, pretending everything was normal. She sighed and closed her eyes. "Happy birthday."

"Thank you."

"I heard about what happened." Selina crept closer and closer to Bruce until she was standing at the foot of his bed. "What are you going to do?"

Bruce stood, walking towards her. "I don't know."

He really didn't want to think about anything else. He dreamed about the moment so often, it felt like one. The two crept closer and closer to each other until their toes touched and Bruce put his hands on Selina's waist. Selina reciprocated it, putting her hands on his shoulders.

"Leaving Gotham," Selina started, her eyes closed and her nose almost touching Bruce's. "It was educational. I… I couldn't stop thinking about Gotham."

Bruce laughed. "Gotham?"

Selina shot him a mock glare. "Well, certain people in Gotham. Maybe one of them was you."

"I thought about you too. Maybe we should share our thoughts."

"You go first."

Bruce took a deep breath. "I thought about us. And I really like you and I thought we match each other a lot. We can teach each other things about each other and make each other better people. I just feel… comfortable with you."

Selina gave a small laugh. "Wow, Bruce. You are a pretty damn good feelings-sharer."

"What about you? What did you think about?"

"I was worried."

Bruce's eyes opened, and he stared into Selina's shiny green ones. "Oh? What about?"

"You know," Selina sighed. "I'm a street kid. You're a billionaire. Together, we could be the most cliché love story in the world."

Bruce's laugh was interrupted with Selina's lips pressed onto his, and he returned it. It felt exactly like it did four months ago when they kissed, except this one had no sorrow in it. Bruce couldn't think of anything sad, and neither could Selina. Over and over again, their lips grazed each other. Bruce could feel Selina's deep, steady breathing and pulse, and Selina felt Bruce's sharp intakes of breath followed by long pauses where he had forgotten to inhale. They felt each other's skin and heard each other's short laughs and breaths. It had been a long time coming.

Their kiss didn't break until they had fallen onto Bruce's bed and they had both fallen asleep at the same time, calmed by each other's heart beats. Still holding each other, their faces barely apart from one another, they fell fast asleep, not a sound from anything else, not feeling anything except each other, as if they were dying together.

Selina had woken up first. It was the morning, and the sun bathed the clouds crimson. Not wanting to disturb Bruce, she laid still for a few moments watching the boy sleep. She didn't mind. It soothed her to see him so calm, breathing so steadily. Bruce woke up to Selina's smiling face, forcing his lips into a grin too. If it wasn't for the arguing downstairs, the moment would have been the happiest in his life.

Bruce took a minute to brief Selina on the criminal task force downstairs, and the two of them made their way down the stairs to meet them.

Firebird was the first to see the two, grinning and exclaiming, "You went upstairs one night, and then you came back downstairs with a chick on your arm. You remind me of my brother."

Puppeteer shook her head. "Amanda Waller has put trained soldiers with guns along the perimeter of Wayne Manor. Not even the entire city banded together has the firepower to come within a three mile radius of this place."

"That's only a temporary solution, of course." said Exterminator, jumping in. "We currently don't know the Dollmaker's level of firepower, but in the past he's been able to drive back small armies."

"We have a plan." Puppeteer stood up from the couch and crossed her arms. Her coat was on the floor, but she was still wearing a patchwork shirt and pants and covered her eyes with a mask. "Waller is sending some supplies and Firebird is going to go buy some things. We were hoping you would come with us to his island. We would only be discussing terms and no decision will be made until the end of the seventy-two hours."

Bruce looked over to Selina, then back at the Puppeteer, who was waiting impatiently for a response. He looked over to Alfred, obviously weary and annoyed, then finally nodded. "I'll go, but only if Selina comes with me."

Puppeteer growled, Alfred looked concerned, pacing closer to the two, and Firebird let out a long, "Awww!" Selina put her arm around Bruce's shoulders and whispered, "Together."

 **In somewhat related news, I've recently put out a new series not part of this continuity called The Secret Diaries of Alfred Pennyworth that I think is really funny and cute, so check that out if you want. There will either be two or three more chapters to this story, and I promise absolute insanity that will blow your minds like a neck bomb. (Because we all know what Task Force X is, right?)**


	4. Dollmaker's Plot

Bruce sat down on the couch opposite to the others, Selina going to get a box of cereal. He faced the Puppeteer and asked, "So how do we do this?"

"We'll need to be prepared," she said. "Just in case the Doctor tries to take you by force. The package should be here any moment now. Our team will be all of Task Force X, you, and Selina Kyle."

Alfred stood up. "Don't think you're leaving me behind, mate."

Puppeteer turned around, the unmasked part of her face showing annoyance. "Do you have any combat training?"

"Indeed, nine years in the military."

Firebird chucked, standing near the stairs. "Damn, I never finished middle school."

Puppeteer continued. "We'll get the coordinates from the Wayne's computer, and then we can head there by helicopter. Waller will supply that."

Selina sat down next to Bruce on the couch, her mouth full of cereal. She hadn't eaten for a whole day. Firebird left out the door without a word, probably to pick up the drop-off. The others went to get some rest and wait for the package, leaving Bruce and Selina sitting on the couch with Puppeteer.

They didn't seem dangerous. They all looked exasperated, like they couldn't kill if them if they wanted to. Bruce wanted to strike up a conversation, but Selina did it first for him.

"Why do they call you the Puppeteer?"

She glared at them, and then sighed. "It came upon me a long time ago. The world is nothing but a bunch of puppets that don't do anything until someone comes along and moves them. Every single person on earth is static, not meant to do anything or mean anything, and it's up to one person to give them purpose."

"And that's you?" Selina asked.

"Not necessarily. I'm just holding the place and doing the job until a real Puppeteer comes along, someone who can grab the people of Gotham and give them meaning and purpose and life."

Selina nodded. "So killing people and blowing up buildings, that's your way of giving people life?"

Bruce thought Puppeteer would be offended, but she still spoke softly. "If they don't accept their deaths, they're selfish fools. I would gladly sacrifice my aimless life for others to live a purposeful one."

Bruce finally asked the question that had been on his mind for days. "I'm assuming Firebird and Exterminator aren't helping us out of the goodness of their hearts. How is Waller making them do this?"

Taking a deep sigh, Puppeteer turned around so Bruce and Selina could see the scar on the back of her neck, almost as wide as a coin. "After Waller took us from our respective prisons, she planted these micro-bombs in our necks that she can detonate with the click of a button. If it weren't for them, this place would be flooded with poison gas and set on fire ten times over."

Selina grinned. "This implying that you wouldn't do anything?"

"I would gladly kill myself to get out of this Task Force. But even more than this, and all other evils of the world, I hate the Dollmaker. This is my ticket to killing him."

Bruce nudged Selina, telling her not to ask any more questions. Selina stood up, motioning for Bruce to follow her and going out to the garden. It was safe outside, since Waller had put up a line of soldiers around the perimeter of the manor.

The sunlight seemed to burn after so long without it. It shone through the windows and bathed the two in warmth when their feet touched the green. The grass was faded and the statues seemed fragmented from lack of care, but the garden still had a charm. Other than a concrete sidewalk and a pond, the entire thing was a large patch of grass and hedge, perfect to sit in and think. Bruce had done it a few times, and he taught Selina how to a few months ago.

Selina chose a spot in the shade beneath the shadow of the mansion and sat on the grass, Bruce following her and sitting beside. She had missed that part of the manor, probably the only safe place in Gotham.

"So what are you going to do?" she asked, shattering the silence like a stone through glass.

Bruce looked over to her. "What do you mean?"

Selina took her jacket off, lying out on the ground to lie on. She closed her eyes and put her hands across her stomach, trying to zone out everything but Bruce's voice. "I mean with the Dollmaker. What are you going to do if the meeting doesn't go well?"

Sighing, Bruce leaned back until he was lying on the grass like Selina, closing his eyes. "I can't afford to think about that right now."

Selina gave a murmured response, and took a deep breath. "I was there, you know. I was at your birthday party."

"Oh? Why didn't you come in?"

"By the time I arrived, the Dollmaker's men were loading body-bags from their van. I decided to watch from outside in case they were planning something and were taking hostages. I was going to get you, but by then the doors were locked. I was watching you though. I saw you in your suit mingling around with the bigwigs."

Bruce smiled. "How long have you been in Gotham?"

"I took a train from Midway. I arrived maybe two or three hours before the party. I would've come to see you, but I figured you'd be getting ready and I didn't want to bug you."

"You could never bug me."

"Aw. That's touching."

Bruce laughed. He opened his eyes and turned on his side to face Selina.

"So are we a couple now?" she asked, grinning. "Are the tabloids going to call us Brulina or something?"

Amused, Bruce stretched his arms out in front of him. "I can't think of a better name. But you know a lot more about couples than I do, so if you say we're a couple, then we are."

"You know what couples do, don't you? They go on dates and make out and stuff."

"I think so."

"When all this is over, and assuming no one else tries to kill us, you are taking me on a date. You've read about dates in books, right?"

"You'll have to teach me how. I don't really go on a lot of dates."

Selina opened her eyes and leaned up, grinning and giggling. "No, that implies you've at least gone on a few dates."

"Alright, fine. I've never been on a date. But I've watched a movie where the protagonist's friend goes on a date, so at least I know what they look like."

"Maybe we'll go to the park. You can buy me lunch with the millions of dollars you claim you have but never seem to throw around like a normal millionaire. Then I'll hug you so a bunch of people see us together and feel bad about themselves."

Bruce sighed, chuckling. "First off, I'm a billionaire. And I think me not being a normal billionaire is a good thing. Second, I'm pretty sure the gazette would have a field day with us if they saw us in public."

"Oh? Well if I'm that embarrassing-"

"I didn't mean-"

"I was joking, kid."

Bruce lay back down, relaxed, snickering. "I've been meaning to talk to you about my nickname."

"What? You want an animal like me? We can call you Dog."

"I'll think of one."

After that, the two just closed their eyes and enjoyed the serenity. The sunlight made it hard even with their eyes closed, but they got used to it. Selina snaked her hand over to Bruce's and he reciprocated it with a gentle squeeze with his fingers. Time seemed like a lost concept after a few minutes, and the world seemed to go dark.

They were interrupted by Firebird's voice and footsteps. Selina jolted upright to see him carrying a bunch of bags and boxes, as if he had finished a shopping spree run by the CIA.

"Hey, kiddies!" he exclaimed, holding up his bags as if trying to outstretch his arms. "I brought you presents!"

"No offense, but the last thing you want to hear an arsonist say is, 'I brought you presents.'"

Firebird shot Selina a mock glare and came closer to the two, dropping the boxes in front of them.

"So guess what?" he said. "Since we're going on a secret mission, I figured you," he pointed at Bruce. "Should look less like kid I beat up in middle school, and you," turning to Selina, "Should look less like you're going to clean my chimney when this is over. So I burned down a department store and bought you outfits!"

Selina glared at him. "No thanks."

Firebird sighed, as if defeated. "Okay, fine. You caught me. Sadly, no department store burned down. But Amanda Waller did send some trinkets for you guys that will make you look a lot more badass."

He gave the two the bags. Bruce picked his up, but Selina left hers on the ground. "So Amanda Waller sends weapons in Old Navy gift bags?"

"No, that bit was all me."

Bruce opened his bag first, and pulled out a handgun, metallic and black, fully loaded. Firebird grinned and motioned to it. "That's a good one. The most expensive on the market."

"No. No one will die on this mission." he said, confidently.

Firebird seemed disappointed. "Oh, come on. No killing, no fun. What, are you waiting for your eighteenth birthday?"

Bruce shot him a look and dropped the gun back in the bag.

"Okay, fine." Firebird growled. "There's a bulletproof vest in there, which you're probably going to need."

Bruce pulled out the black Kevlar vest and measured it against his body. He was skinny, and it was built for people more built than he was, but that could be adjusted. The length was right, though. It weighed a lot, and would probably slow him down.

Bruce nodded, accepting the gift, and Firebird continued. "There's a pair of gauntlets in there as well. Without any guns, those might actually help you defend yourself. Or don't tell me this is a _no one gets injured_ mission too?"

They fit him perfectly. A couple straps held the sleek black gloves on Bruce's hands, and covered his forearms. The two notable features were the knuckles, which had metal bars on them for punching things, and the blades on the side of the forearm Bruce could use to cut things. He put them back in the bag, accepting them.

Finally, Bruce pulled out a long coat from the bag, also black and long enough to be a cape. It came with a pair of black sweatpants, and Bruce looked confused at Firebird.

"They would've been red, but they're built for stealth." he said. "The coat has holsters for equipment and you're not wearing your fancy rich-boy pants on this thing. Plus, it looks pretty damn badass."

"Thank you." Bruce said. He didn't like thanking a criminal, but the way he was acting, it was hard to believe he had done anything illegal.

Firebird turned to Selina, waiting for her to open her bag.

"I had to request those for you. You're kind of a last minute addition." he smirked.

Selina dug into her bag and pulled out a jacket, also black leather like hers, but much lighter and lined with pockets. She had to admit, it would be more useful in the event of combat. It was the cat suit that made her throw the bag at Firebird.

Firebird grinned like a maniac. "I swear to god, I didn't choose that for you. It's a special fabric that doesn't reflect light and doesn't show up on radar. I assumed you would be our stealth devil. Plus it'll probably get Mister Rich Boy to pop a fly, if you know what I'm saying."

Selina ignored him. Firebird handed the bag back over to her and handed her the last piece of equipment, a transcoder she could use to open locks with. Selina shot Firebird a look and took the bag, sifting through the contents.

Firebird smiled, satisfied. "Your butler gets a vest too, but I figured he'd wear his old army uniform for nostalgia. I also have my flamethrowers, Exterminator's gas, and… frankly, I couldn't sleep at night if I told children what I brought for Puppet lady."

He headed off to go inside the manor, leaving Bruce and Selina shifting through their bags. Selina decided to head inside since another meeting was probably going to start. Bruce followed her.

Plunging back into the dark of the manor, the two saw Puppeteer first, sitting in the same spot she was when they left. She was twiddling her fingers and thinking, while Alfred and the Exterminator started to come in from the kitchen. Exterminator was holding a box of cereal.

Firebird handed Exterminator his bag and left the rest of the boxes on the ground. Exterminator put on one of his grey gas masks and weighed a gas gun in his hands, smiling.

"There's not much I can say right now." Puppeteer sighed, picking out a knife from her box she could wear on her finger. "We leave in five hours. I suggest you all get ready. It looks like a six hour flight from Gotham."

Bruce headed up to his bedroom. Selina had the same idea, trailing him up the stairs. Bruce emptied his bag onto the bed and weighed the vest. He headed to his closet to find something to wear under it, and found a black dress shirt to keep with the stealth theme. Selina grabbed her bag and headed off to another room.

Bruce stripped out of his khakis and sweater vest and put on the black. He adjusted the bulletproof vest as tight as he could make it without it being suffocating. It prevented him from bending over comfortably, but the protection would be vital if something went wrong. The coat went on next, draping just below his knees behind him and coming together with straps at the front over the chest.

Finally, the gauntlets couldn't fit under the sleeves of the jacket, so Bruce strapped them on over, making his forearms seem bulky compared to the rest of the outfit. A hood connected to the jacket could go over his head, but that would prevent the mobility he needed. Bruce stared at himself in the mirror, bewildered at what he saw.

Selina came in after, garbed in her uniform for the mission. She kept her shoes and goggles, but carried her old clothes on her arm. She wore a black cat suit with multiple straps over the legs, arms, and chest to be adjusted. It looked woven out of some sort of fabric. The black leather jacket went over it, sleeker and thinner than her old one.

"Wow." she grinned, looking at Bruce. "Gotham's very own Firebird; professional arsonist, legal sociopath, and a pretty damn good fashion designer half the time."

Bruce turned in his uniform, spinning like he was trying to be a model. "This meaning you don't like your uniform?"

"You don't get to judge. You're a badass emo soldier. I'm wearing a slutty steampunk Halloween costume."

"You look great."

"You know, if you insult me at least once a week, it'd make your compliments a lot more sincere."

"But you-"

"If you say you can't think of anything wrong with me, I'm going to stab you."

Bruce laughed, going back to caressing the gauntlets on his arms. He tried just lightly punching his bedpost and scraped a bit of the wood off. He could do some damage with them. He started downstairs when he was comfortable with it, but Selina grabbed his arm above the glove. He looked back at her and she was looking concerned at him.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Bruce nodded. "Yeah, I'm okay. Why do you ask?"

"You're off to go have a meeting with the guy who tried to buy you and you're acting like you're visiting an uncle. What's going on?"

It was true. Bruce wasn't really thinking about it. Ever since Selina had come back, he hadn't been thinking about anything like he did when she was gone. Before, he was completely losing his mind over the Dollmaker, and now he was simply taking Puppeteer's word it was going to be fine. He would never say it, and he didn't even want to believe it was true, but Selina was a distraction for him. Even worse, he didn't know if it was a good or bad thing.

"I don't know." he said.

Selina narrowed her eyes, curious, and let go of his arm. Bruce went down the stairs and down to the living room where the others were getting ready. Firebird had his suit and red cape, a mask covering his face to help with the smoke from his MO. Exterminator also had a mask, slightly different for a different use, and dressed in a baggy jumpsuit with the poison gas containers in a backpack with a hose coming out and ending in a gun.

Puppeteer looked absolutely terrifying. A strap went on her forearms so metal spikes jutted out from the front and patchwork gloves made more barbs extend from each of her fingers. A belt of bullets and guns hung from her waist and her new boots had spurs on them.

Alfred had just come in, wearing a vest under an army uniform and guns on his belt. The six stared at each other for a while until Firebird broke the silence. "Damn, my life is awesome!"

Puppeteer stood and gained the attention of the group. "Whatever happens, we never split up unless it is absolutely necessary. If Dollmaker tries splitting us up, we head straight for the jet and wait for the others. Hell hath no fury like being alone in a room with Dr. Dulmacher."

The room started murmuring in agreement, and Exterminator started to head for the door of the manor. He told them a helicopter was waiting not far from Wayne manor, and the rest of the company started to follow. They were silent mostly, except for Firebird's remarks concerning comparisons to the Fellowship of the Ring.

Selina walked beside Bruce, the skinny, quiet, awkward billionaire almost alien in his battle suit. The bottom of his long black jacket fluttered behind him as he walked, making his shadow look like he had a cape. She had to get him to look at his own shadow, and he could hardly believe it was him.

Past the gates of the mansion and across a small patch of concrete, a helicopter waited in an open area of a parking lot, the blades still spinning from just recently having been landed. The pilot looked like a military man, probably working for Amanda Waller. The door slid open, and it looked like there was barely enough room for the six.

Two benches faced each other on the inside, enough for Bruce, Selina, and Alfred to sit on one, and the Task Force to sit on the other. They had to squeeze in, and Bruce had to take off his gauntlets to stop the blades on the side from nicking Selina. Once they had all fit, the door slid closed and with a loud thumping that turned into a whir, the helicopter left the ground straight for the Dollmaker's island.

Selina got the seat next to the window beside Bruce, and she looked out the small, stained window at the world shrinking below her. Wayne manor eventually left view, and she started to play a game with herself recognizing the buildings that whizzed past the window below. City hall, the Flea, Arkham Asylum. She watched Gotham city disappear into the fog as the helicopter left the bay.

"Well, that's it." she said. That was all she wanted to say. Selina didn't feel like talking in front of the criminals.

Bruce gave a small sigh to acknowledge her. She nudged him with her elbow and smiled, as if asking if he was alright. Bruce nodded back, and Selina went back to gazing out the window. Bruce stared at the floor in front of him, not talking.

The hours passed like clockwork, Gotham city now seeming like a distant dream. Selina had fallen asleep with her head against the window when Alfred told Bruce to wake her up, saying it wasn't good to sleep before a mission. Bruce sat for the entire five hours, his body feeling like a statue. Then an island appeared in the distance.

It was only a speck, but it started to grow. It was tiny; thirty of them could fit in Gotham. There was only one building on it, a massive, white building that could be a castle.

The minutes ticked by as the helicopter descended and the patch of rock grew closer until the six were hovering right over a landing pad at the front of the building. It was only two stories high, but looked like it extended underground. There were only a few windows, and it looked like five Wayne manors stuck together. The blades slowly finished spinning and the helicopter came to a stop.

Bruce looked over at Puppeteer, then to Selina. Puppeteer nodded, and started to get up. The helicopter door slid open and Selina peered outside. There were men on the grounds that obviously worked for the Dollmaker, but their guns were all in their holsters. Dollmaker probably didn't want to hurt them. He asked for Bruce uninjured and still breathing.

Slowly and hesitantly, Selina stepped out of the helicopter, Bruce after her. Dollmaker's men relaxed when they saw him, almost like a welcome. Puppeteer stepped out after, glaring at the guards, and the others followed. It was cold from the ocean breeze and the ground was made of rock. A few times, Selina's feet would slip and get caught on the rock until they reached the paved concrete. Dollmaker had done his best to make it seem eloquent, carving fancy designs into the sidewalk around the building and welding statues onto the walls.

"How did this guy even get this island?" Firebird asked. "And why has no one nuked it yet?"

Exterminator got his gas guns ready as they reached the door. The guard standing at it opened it for them as cordially as he could for a guy with an eye patch and a hand that clearly wasn't his attached to his arm.

"The Doctor has been expecting you." he said.

Selina shot him a glare and entered the building. The entire thing was even more lavish on the inside, furnished better than Wayne manor and filled with so many trinkets and statues, the building could've been worth more than all of Gotham city. The odd man or woman would stroll by across the room or up the stairs with a bandage covering their limbs or face. They didn't look like victims. They looked happy.

Puppeteer took the lead, Alfred coming up behind her to walk next to Bruce. Another guard with a white wrapping covering his arm pointed to a door up the stairs and said, "The Doctor is patiently waiting for you."

Puppeteer climbed the stairs, the rest of the company following her. Alfred looked down at Bruce reassuringly, and Bruce smiled back. He turned back to Selina, and she kept on straight ahead. When a guard at the door slid it open, he tried not to show any emotion. He didn't want to look weak at all in front of the Dollmaker.

He didn't change in the least. Doctor Dulmacher took his glasses off and put his newspaper down, crossing his hands on the wooden desk he was sitting on. He looked older up close, but still tall and healthy. The second Bruce came into his vision, a smile appeared on his face.

"Ah, welcome Mr. Wayne." Dollmaker's voice was raspy and quiet to the point of being a whisper, but cut the air like a knife. "Are these friends of yours?"

"Representatives." said Puppeteer. "We're here to discuss terms."

Dollmaker nodded. "Of course."

Bruce gained the nerve to talk to him. "Why do you want to buy me?"

His question quieted the room and drew every pair of eyes to him. Even Selina, who was so adamant about staying callous, took a sharp breath as the room went silent.

Grinning, Dollmaker uncrossed his hands and flipped through some papers on his desk, keeping eye contact with Bruce. "Oh, there are all kinds of reasons why I buy people. Perhaps I need someone of their blood type or gene. Perhaps I require the certain shape or color of one of their body parts. However, I've learned over the years not to tell them why. It only needlessly distresses them."

Alfred stepped in front of Bruce and asked, "Do you specifically require Bruce Wayne?"

"Long story short, yes I do."

"Is it possible we can bribe you off of him?"

"I doubt it."

Firebird stepped in with his own question. "What's with all the people here?"

"That, I will tell Bruce Wayne and only Bruce Wayne. Will that be all?"

The room went quiet as two guards came in and stood behind them. Dollmaker turned to Puppeteer and smirked. Puppeteer stepped out in front of Alfred and crossed her arms.

"I trust you'll keep your part of our deal." she said, stern.

Dollmaker nodded, gesturing to one of his guards. "Yes. Well done, Puppeteer."

One of the guards walked up behind her and put on hand on her throat. The others almost didn't notice the other guard coming up behind them with a shotgun. Bruce thought the guard was slitting Puppeteer's throat, but he wasn't. His hand was on her throat, and the blade that came out of his pocket was going for the back of her neck.

He was cutting out the bomb in her neck.

"You've delivered Bruce Wayne exactly as I told you." Dollmaker sneered over Puppeteer's screams of pain as the guard dug into the back of her neck with the knife with surgical precision, and threw the coin-sized bomb at the wall next to them. It exploded just then, when Amanda Waller must have received a signal it was being removed, and left a basketball sized hole in the concrete wall.

Puppeteer crouched on the ground, hands stemming the blood from the back of her neck. It was then that Bruce felt the guard behind him press the shotgun up against the back of his head, just grazing his hair. It was Selina's scream that brought Puppeteer back into action.

One bloody hand on the back of her neck, she stood back up to face the Dollmaker.

"Thank you, Doctor Dulmacher." she said, voice strained and hoarse.

Dollmaker nodded. "Take the others to the basement. I want Mr. Wayne in my lab and prepped for surgery. As I promised, the Puppeteer will be granted permission to take them to the basement."

"Thank you, Doctor." she sighed, and walked back out the door, the guard behind her urging Alfred, Selina, Firebird, and Exterminator to follow her with his finger on the trigger of a shotgun. Bruce was left in the room with a guard behind him, and the Dollmaker in front, smiling like he was being given a present.

 **Alright, here's some proof your opinions matter to me. In the reviews or by private message, I want you to tell me what you want to see Bruce and Selina doing in the next few stories. My next one is already lined up and ready, but after that I want to use your ideas and thank you for all the support. If your idea uses an OC, put your name down and I'll use it! Chapter four will be out before summer ends. Thanks for reading!**


	5. The Dollmaker's Diamond

**The Dollmaker is becoming quite the mastermind, isn't he? To answer a question, Suicide Squad is just the nickname of the team given to it by its members. It wouldn't make sense for the name to come in this early, so that's why I'm just calling them Task Force X. Now, you guys remember the Basement, right?**

Selina was right. The island did reach underground.

The guard prodded the company with the shotgun while the Puppeteer followed, walking beside them. Not looking back, they were forced down a flight of stairs and into a large dark room with a dirt floor, and several pillars holding up a brown ceiling. There were a few people down there already, all missing body parts. Except unlike the glamourous upstairs, none of these people were being cared for. No bandages covered their bloody eye sockets or chest wounds.

Something nudged Selina's hand. She looked up, and the Puppeteer walking beside her was looking straight ahead, emotionless. Selina looked down, and found something sharp was being nudged into her hand. She rejected it at first, but Puppeteer gave a slight scowl just loud enough for Selina to hear, so she took it. It was a lock pick.

"Sorry you won't have a lot of company." the guard said. "We've had to rebuild our stock from scratch and new patients have been pouring in."

Firebird was pushed in by Alfred. He clung on the bars and yelled, "What the hell, Puppeteer? We were in this together!"

Puppeteer didn't answer.

Firebird just got angrier. "What was all that shit about killing the Dollmaker? You hated him more than any of us, and now you're his stooge? What the hell is he offering you?"

The guard locked the cell door and walked off with Puppeteer, leaving the four in the basement.

Firebird kept yelling and Alfred had to hold his shoulders and shake him to calm him down. Selina held the metal lock pick in her hands, and Exterminator took notice.

"What do you have there?" he asked.

Firebird stopped yelling long enough to glance over. "I never gave you a lock pick."

Selina weighed it in her hands. "Puppeteer gave it to me just now. I think she's still with us."

"I never doubted that crazy puppet lady." Firebird exclaimed, beaming.

Alfred walked over and snatched the pick out of Selina's hand, examining it. "There's no way your hand will fit through the bars. You don't have a way to the other side of the door, so we're still screwed."

They were silent for a while until Exterminator lit up. "They didn't take our weapons."

"So?" Firebird asked. "I have fire and you have gas. That door must be four inches of solid steel; it'll take hours to weld through."

"Not alone." Exterminator walked over to the side of a wall where a pillar was. "But my gas is combustible. If I can get my gas to rest near here and you light it, it'll explode and blow a hole so Cat Girl can climb through a heating duct."

"How do you know there's a heating duct behind the wall?" Alfred asked.

Exterminator frowned. "Heating ducts are great places to spray poison gas into if you want to kill everyone in a building. I've been practising."

"Upstairs looked pretty high-tech though." Alfred said. "There could be motion sensors in the ducts."

"Then it's a good thing one of us has a radar-proof cat suit." Selina took off her leather jacket and threw it to Alfred.

Exterminator nodded and took out his gas guns. He slid his green mask over his face and tightened the part that went over his nose and mouth to filter out poison. He started tapping on different parts of the wall as the others watched him, and then without warning he pressed the trigger on his gas gun.

Selina and Alfred put their hands over their mouths to make sure they wouldn't breathe any of it in, while Firebird slipped on his own mask. A green gas sprayed from the tip right where he aimed it, and some of it began to settle to the ground.

He started running from it, and that's when Firebird put the final adjustments to his mask and aimed his flamethrower.

"Man, I love my job!" he screamed, a burst of fire exploding from his gun with a flash of light and the explosion coating Alfred and Selina in rubble. The other prisoners stared in amazement. One tried running to freedom and Firebird had to set him on fire to stop him setting off the motion sensors.

Exterminator was exactly right. There were no motion sensors or cameras in the basement itself, but the heating ducts looked like there could be. Not too high off the ground, a closed off heating vent jutted out of the wall, slightly burnt from the explosion. It was just big enough for Selina to crawl through.

"Will you know your way back here?" Alfred asked.

"Cats always land on their feet, remember?" she sighed, beginning to scale the rubble and duck into the dark vent. She saw the others waving goodbye and whispering good luck out of the corner of her eye as she plunged into the dark. It was cold in the main room of the building, so all she had to do was follow where the vent was cooler and she'd find herself somewhere hospitable.

Meanwhile, Bruce had been drugged and unconscious for who knows how long. The goon had injected something into his neck and it knocked him out. The first thing he saw was lights in the black of his eyes, then all he felt was time passing as he couldn't speak or move.

He woke himself up. At first, the world was nothing more than a blurred cosmos, then his senses began to flare up one by one. First he could smell the gauze and anaesthetics in the room with him. Then he could taste the blood in his mouth, or perhaps it was a drug the Dollmaker had given him. Finally, he seemed to jolt awake, his eyes fluttering back to alertness, and he realized where he was.

He was on an operating table in a surgery lab, a white sheet over his naked body as cutting tools lay on desks nearby as if ready to be used at a moment's notice.

Bruce began to lean up, the drug almost completely worn off. He wrapped the sheet around his waist and tried exploring his surroundings. There was no noise anywhere apart from his own breathing, but that again could be the effects of the drug. The room was entirely white with a few other tables, but his was separated from the others with a wall. His jacket and clothes were hung up on a rack, and the gauntlets were probably in a locked box somewhere.

He heard a door opening and climbed back onto the metal surgery bed. It was no use trying to run. Where would he go? Sitting on top of the bed and waiting for the footsteps to get louder and louder, Bruce met the Dollmaker, walking in with his white lab coat and glasses.

"Hello, Mr. Wayne. Welcome back to life." he said, in the same raspy, quiet voice Bruce remembered.

Bruce didn't say anything. He had more questions than he ever had in his life, but he couldn't speak any of them.

"You have a strong resolve, Mr. Wayne." Dollmaker paced over to the side of the bed, just like a doctor would to his patient. "If you didn't, you would have woken up on an operating table in Moscow. It was your will that allowed you to wake from the toxin."

"What is this place? Who are all the people here?" Bruce finally asked.

Dollmaker nodded. "As I've said, I am a doctor, and a rather high-end one at that. See, all over the world, people are in need of medical care. Politicians, kings, every sort of person imaginable has come to me for help and paid me enough money to run a large city for a month to get them that care. And I get it to them no matter what."

"You can't possibly be doing this for the money."

"Correct, Mr. Wayne. There's a question I've pondered my whole life, which I've experimented on with animals in the yard as a child and now the people on the island. What makes you yourself? What if I replaced your eyes with someone else's? Obviously you would still be Bruce Wayne, but what if I replaced your face, your lungs, your brain, and your heart? Would you still be you, or would you become something else? If I take every piece of a doll apart one by one and replaced it with something else, would it still be a doll?"

Bruce narrowed his eyes. "You're killing innocent people."

"I'm saving lives and researching for the good of humanity. For every person that dies from my work, ten more are saved. And I would hardly call them innocent. The people I capture come by my island on illegal ferry or terrorist jet. They are the only ones who suffer. People like you will die quickly and happily, and your body parts will save the lives of kings and queens."

"So what are you going to do with me?"

"The wife of the czar of Russia is dying, and needs a rare blood transfusion to save her life. She's given me a small fortune. I gave her a list of people with the blood type and she pointed to your name. Unfortunately, the transfusion requires more blood than you will require to stay alive, but I promise your body will be used for research for mankind."

Bruce started to stand, realizing the drug had completely worn off. "Why can't the czar's wife see another doctor?"

Dollmaker started to smile. "You think she would've come to me if she had a choice? I'm what you'd call a last resort. Coming to me takes grit, and costs dearly in money and in conscience, but with their lives on the line, you'd be surprised how many can do it."

Bruce nodded. "So what are you going to do with the others I came with?"

"I think it best you don't know when you go."

That made Bruce stand up, almost like his patience shorted out. "They're innocent people."

Dollmaker burst into a full out laugh. "Two serial killers, a military man who has killed hundreds, and a street thief? You have a very strange delineation of innocent, Mr. Wayne. But the fact that they're in my custody should motivate you to obey me."

Bruce was silent. He didn't have anything to say to the man.

"An intermediary will be here to pick you up shortly. It was a pleasure talking to you, Mr. Wayne. I'm sorry you have to go, but it will not be for naught."

With that being said, the Doctor left, leaving Bruce sitting on the metal bed with his eyes closed, praying the others were okay.

In the main room, Selina had found an opening in the wall above a shelf where the pipes met a vent in the wall. Two guards were standing below her, talking to each other. They probably didn't meet many stragglers.

Selina pried the vent open quietly, but not quietly enough. When the guards noticed her, speed became her priority, pushing the vent open. She put a foot on the shelf below her and kicked it off the wall, trying to startle the guards.

She jumped down, the two men surprised and reaching for their guns. In one fluid motion, she grabbed one of the guard's arms and pulled him onto the ground. She put one foot on the back of his neck to keep him down and grabbed the gun off his belt. As fast as she could, she shot the other guard in the leg and gave the one under her a shot in the shoulder.

Selina took their coms so they couldn't call for assistance, but kept them in her pocket. She might need them later. She remembered the route she took down to the basement, and followed it. There were only a few guards left to deal with on the way. Most of them she could avoid by hiding behind walls and climbing on shelves, but two of them she had to shoot in the leg, again taking their coms and clipping them on her belt. Bruce would take one, Firebird and Exterminator would take another, and Alfred would take one in case they needed to split up again.

Slipping past Dollmaker's office and going down the stairs, she found her way to the basement. It was almost too easy. Part of her thought the Dollmaker wanted them to leave, but perhaps the Puppeteer was the one that planned their escape.

They tried not making any noise. Selina slipped down to the door and met the others through the bars.

"Get us out of here." Firebird whispered.

"Oh, is that what you want?" Selina shot him a look. "I was here to get some nachos, but while I'm here, I might as well help you out."

Selina had picked a lock a million times. Dollmaker's wasn't any different. She wondered if people were putting any effort into their locks anymore. She knew exactly what to press and what angle to twist at, and soon the door was open.

Firebird ran out, screaming as if he was trapped for years. Alfred threw Selina's leather jacket at her and took charge of the group with a shout.

"Alright, now we get Master Bruce and get out." he said.

Exterminator laughed. "Dollmaker can click a button and have a small army here in minutes. We'd never make it out alive."

"Is your gas lethal?"

That question threw Exterminator off. "It depends on the dose."

Alfred nodded. "Go with Firebird and find the furnace room. If we can dose this place with a non-lethal amount of poison gas, we can threaten to blow it up if he doesn't let us out alive."

Selina handed Firebird one of the coms. "I lifted this off a guard. Tune the frequency and we'll be able to contact each other."

Exterminator started fiddling with the knobs on the com. "Alright, done. But we'll need someone tailing us in case one of Dollmaker's men sees us."

Alfred looked over at Selina, then back to Exterminator. "I'll go."

Selina put a hand on Alfred's shoulder. "Alfred, no. I'll go. Bruce needs you."

"You can't fight like me, and I can't sneak up to Master Bruce like you." Alfred closed his eyes, and his franticness made his tone appear like a scowl. "He needs you. You're a good person, Miss Kyle, and I wouldn't trust anyone else with Master Bruce's life."

Selina nodded. She took out one of the coms and gave it to Alfred.

"Dollmaker said Master Bruce was going to be prepped for surgery." Alfred said. "Look for an operating room or a lab or something."

"Good luck, Old Man."

"Bring back Master Bruce."

Selina ran back up the stairs and began looking for a surgery lab, while Alfred led Firebird and Exterminator to find a furnace room.

In the operating room, Bruce had put on the clothes Dollmaker left him on the wall and tried to find his gauntlets. There was a locked box on the top shelf of the equipment rack, and they were probably in there. There was nothing he could do anyways. He couldn't contact the others or talk the Dollmaker into a deal. He really didn't know what to do. All he could do was wait, and it was killing him. He couldn't go anywhere. He peered around the corner, and didn't dare go down the hall.

There were cells, maybe twenty, and that's where the others were being kept. Each contained a human being, missing an arm, or a lower body, or a face. All of them were still alive, and moaning like they'd rather be dead. It could be where he was headed.

While wandering around the room, Bruce had found a book with a list of all the patients the Dollmaker worked for. Then there was a long list of people the Dollmaker had killed. It was unjustifiable.

There was a loud banging outside. Bruce dashed as close as he could to the sound without leaving the room. He heard a scream, and knew it was from outside the operating room. Another loud thud, then what tantalizingly sounded like Selina's voice.

"Where is he?" she screamed, muffled by the door.

Bruce tried yelling to get her attention, but it was the strained answer of the guard that tipped her off. The lock twitched in the way that told Bruce that Selina was picking it from the outside. He took a deep breath and his heart rate slowed by a million. If she had escaped, the others could too.

Selina burst into the room, panting.

"Selina!" Bruce shouted, half overjoyed and half concerned, "Are the others okay?"

"Yeah, the others are okay." she panted, trying to catch her breath. "Are you okay? Did Dollmaker take anything?"

Bruce shook his head. "No, I'm good."

"Alfred has a plan to get off the island. We're supposed to wait here until they call us."

Bruce crept closer and closer to her, and Selina rushed into a hug.

Still dazed, Bruce asked, "How did you escape?"

"The Puppeteer slipped me a lock pick when she was taking us down to the basement."

"Does that mean she's still on our side?"

"I don't know."

Bruce sighed and sat back down on the metal bed. "We can't stay here. A guy is supposed to be here any minute now to take me to Moscow. Where's Alfred?"

"He's going to the furnace room. He thinks he can blackmail the Dollmaker into letting us go."

"We can't stay here. We have to go."

Selina thought for a bit, and then nodded. "Where are your gauntlets?"

Bruce pointed to the box on the shelf, and Selina took notice. She put one foot on the table below to hoist herself up and grabbed the box, putting it down on the table. The lock pick came out of her pocket, and she jammed it into the lock. It was a matter of minutes before she handed Bruce the gauntlets and he strapped them onto his forearms. Selina dashed out of the room, Bruce following her. They went out the door and arrived outside on the top floor of the medical wing in the building, the guards knocked unconscious on the floor.

"What now?" Selina asked.

"We should be helping Alfred. We should catch up to him."

"They're already on their way to the furnace room. We'd never catch him."

Bruce looked across the room, on the other side of the floor. "The Dollmaker's office is over there. We can probably find an emergency map in it."

"Is Dollmaker in there?"

"I don't know."

Bruce started to break into a run towards the office, and Selina followed. Their footsteps got quieter and quieter as they approached the office until it became a fast walk. Finally, Dollmaker's office was in their sights.

The door was open slightly, and Selina ducked past the crack as fast as she could. Not seeing anything, she looked inside more carefully, and saw the Dollmaker wasn't inside. It was safe. Bruce slipped through the crack in the door, and Selina peered inside a bit more before it was safe to her.

"Crap." she sighed. "His office is huge."

The two split up, Bruce looking beside the main desk and Selina taking the shelves on the sides. A map of the building with the fire exits marked out was hung on the walls, and Bruce ripped it off the wall and called Selina.

"It looks pretty close to here." Selina said. "I think we can make it."

Bruce nodded. "Alright, let's go."

Putting the map down, he noticed a red light flashing on the desk in front of him, Dollmaker's desk. He leaned in closer to see what it was, the light continuing to flash bright crimson. Then he asked Selina.

She started running for the door.

"What's wrong?" Bruce asked, yelling and running after her.

Selina stopped and turned back. "The light; it means a silent alarm went off. We've got to get out of here."

Bruce ran to the door as fast as he could and looked around. Six guards were already coming up the stairs and spotted them. Selina looked at him as if running was no use. One of them was already on their com talking to the Dollmaker. Bruce looked back at Selina and tightened his gauntlets.

Selina wasn't afraid. It wasn't her first fight. The guards were all armed with bats, probably since they couldn't risk shooting Bruce and lowering his value. Selina charged into them and jumped on one, putting him in a chokehold. Bruce followed her. He wasn't afraid either; Alfred taught him how to fight. He got one in the face with the brass knuckles on his gauntlets and put him on the ground, and ran after another.

A guard put him in a chokehold, but Bruce jerked back with his elbow as hard as he could, making the guard lurch back and then using his gauntlets on the side of his head. Selina was doing well, striking the guards with her feet and fists. It was almost second nature to her. She kicked one of the guards in the stomach, and then put him on the ground with a chokehold. Sliding under the others, she saw Bruce being lifted into the air and tripped the guard.

They almost could've won. Then Bruce saw Selina get hit over the head with a metal bat and knocked out, and the same blunt impact to the back of the head happened to him, and he blacked out.

Bruce woke up next to Selina, tied up and propped up in a chair. He looked around and saw Alfred, Exterminator, and Firebird all tied up behind him. They weren't in an operating room, or an office. They were in a new room. All the walls were made of glass, and there was a moaning coming from all the walls, muffled and constant. IT was completely empty except for a table with a tray of bloody surgical tools on it.

They had seen the room where patients were treated, and this must have been the room where victims were treated.

"Master Bruce!" Alfred yelled, not helping Bruce's headache. Alfred was tied up behind him, facing away.

"Alfred, I'm okay." Bruce whispered, which was all he could manage. He was suddenly starving and dehydrated, probably a testament to how long he was knocked out.

Firebird's voice came from beside them. "Well, this is awkward."

Bruce's head turned to beside him, and he saw Selina. She was unconscious, her head hanging to the side and her eyes closed. Bruce tried knocking into her to wake her up, but she was still comatose.

The Dollmaker got up from a chair on the other side of the room and began to pace around them. He again grinning, and holding a scalpel in his hands. He paced by Bruce, and he saw the Dollmaker smiling. Guards waited outside, waiting with bats. There must have been a hundred, and as the Dollmaker talked, they began to file into the room in a line. The Puppeteer was there too, in the same condition she was last time they saw her, but she remained indifferent.

"Welcome back to life. I must say, not every person that comes through these doors has managed to cause such mischief to my operation. I am duly impressed."

Bruce felt their chairs wobbling and knew the Firebird was trying to wriggle free. The arsonist screamed, "What the hell is this?"

"You see, we were far too late. The czar's wife died half an hour ago, and therefore I do not need you anymore." Dollmaker said, his hands behind his back.

"So you're going to let us go?" Bruce asked.

"I was going to, but then you pulled that stunt in the basement. I consider myself a fair man, but letting your actions go unpunished would be unfair to all those I've punished already and to myself. You will stay in the basement until I need you for another patient or experiment."

Alfred yelled, calmer than Firebird, "You're killing innocent people."

Dollmaker sighed. "I've already given this speech to Mr. Wayne, I think he can tell it to you."

"He can't say anything that justifies the murder of civilians."

"Not civilians. Illegal terrorists and immigrants that fully deserved their fates."

"And what of your operation? You're not a doctor. You're a psychopath."

Dollmaker laughed. "A psychopath enjoys seeing others in pain. I don't enjoy that. I've learned to be impartial to it for the good of humanity. After all, triumph is only born out of hardship. But the win must outweigh the loss for it to be a worthy one."

"So that's what you are?" Alfred growled. "Anything goes as long as you get your sick win at the end?"

"I think my goal is worthy, after all it-"

Bruce jerked his head to the side so fast, his neck hurt. The Dollmaker was interrupted with the sound of a gunshot, and Bruce only saw the hole in his chest seeping red into his white lab coat. Dollmaker's grin turned into a straight face, and then his mouth gaped a bit before he fell to his knees, then on his face, dead.

It was the Puppeteer. She put the gun back in its holster on her belt and stepped up on the table, kicking the surgery tray off. She had commanded the attention of the room, and everyone was silent as she smiled proudly and stripped off her mask, arms outstretched.

"Guards, guests, prisoners!" she announced. "Please say hello to your new Dollmaker, Fish Mooney!"


	6. Birth of a Dollmaker

It could've been Fish Mooney. Selina couldn't tell. She had gradually begun to wake up, and was jarred back to life at the last second. She wasn't really sure what had happened, but no one was saying a word. Every single person in the room stared in shock at the Dollmaker's dead body on the floor, his blood staining the floor, and Fish standing on the desk with a gun.

She looked so different. If she had to guess, she'd say it was the Dollmaker's fault. Fish's new face was like patchwork, with staples holding her new nose over her new chin. The only thing the Dollmaker kept about her was her eyes, one brown, and one blue. Her new hair was like a wide Mohawk, except a blue dye replaced her old shade of bright red. She seemed more built, more muscular, like she had been training.

Selina felt the trembling of Bruce's arm beside her. No, he wasn't trembling. Bruce was trying to cut through the ropes with the blades on his gauntlets. They weren't too sharp, but he was getting there.

Finally, the guards seemed to break out of their shock. They charged at Fish with their bats in their old master's name, a few carrying away Dr. Dulmacher's body before raising their bats and trying to bludgeon Fish to death.

She was better than them. Apparently she had been learning how to fight. She used her guns and her knives to strike down guards left and right. Selina felt Bruce's arm break free of the ropes, and he started to cut Selina free. She watched Fish take down a few more guards, then start to run. Even she couldn't take on all of Dulmacher's men at once.

"Fish!" Selina yelled, as Fish ran down the hall. Selina jerked free from the ropes as soon as Bruce got them loose enough, running after Fish when Bruce stopped her halfway.

"Selina!" Bruce yelled, "Where are you going?"

"Just free the others, I'll be right back."

Knocking over a guard and taking his gun to trip some of the others, Selina dashed after Fish down the hall. She couldn't see her until she ran past a closet, and Fish's hand reached out. Shooting two guards, Fish pulled Selina in and locked the door, leaving a few guards pounding on the metal outside. She sat her down on the floor, and Selina could only stare at her former mentor's eyes. They were the only things reminding her she was talking to Fish Mooney and not one of Dollmaker's monsters.

"Selina, honey, how are you?" she asked, calmly and sweetly like a mother. It was just like the first time they met, and nothing had changed between them.

Selina laughed. "How am I? What happened to you? I thought you were dead! Are you-"

Fish put a hand on her cheek to calm her down. "Dollmaker found me in a river. He should've let me die, but instead he brought me back to life and tried to turn me into his puppet." Fish sighed, taking a deep, sharp breath. "He replaced everything, day by day, and he tortured me into thinking I was his puppet. It took everything I had to remember who I was."

Selina forgot to breathe a little, almost crying at the sight of her mentor's patchwork face. "Why join our mission?"

"He sent me to Central city to cause mayhem, knowing I'd get drafted into Task Force X. He needed me to deliver Bruce Wayne to him, but I knew Amanda Waller would give me what I needed to kill the doctor. Why do you think I brought you? Or Bolton, or Huang? I knew you would be able to escape. I'd never let anything hurt you, baby."

Selina sighed, the guards still pounding on the locked door. "What are you going to do now?"

"I'm going to take control of this operation. The Doctor was a psychopath, but he did teach me many things. He made me see this business in a whole new light, and I learned that to be powerful, you need to be more than a human being. A name is much more powerful than a body, and while I can die, a face cannot. As Fish Mooney, I've gained all the respect I could ever get, but as the Dollmaker, imagine what I could do. The name Doctor Dulmacher did not make entire cities go on patrol and families to hide indoors. The Dollmaker did."

"I'll stay with you."

"No honey, you can't. I have to do this alone, you would just get killed." Fish pulled a wrinkled envelope with her name signed on it out of her jacket and handed it to Selina. "Go back to Gotham and go to Oswald Cobblepot's club. Give this to Butch Gilzean and tell him I'm okay."

Selina took the white envelope with a quavering hand and stuffed it in the pocket of her leather jacket. She took one last look at Fish Mooney, sighing, "You were like a mother to me, you know that?"

"And you're my baby girl." Fish smiled. "Take the others and head back to Gotham. Make a name for yourself and make people fear it. I'd better be hearing about a huge burglary by the Cat in the paper soon."

Selina nodded, taking one last look at Fish, and then throwing the door open. Fish helped her get rid of some of the guards still there, and Selina slid and flipped over the others, making her way back to Bruce and the others. She only looked back once, seeing Fish leaping away, the guards chasing her.

Some of the guards had noticed them trying to escape. Out of priority, Bruce freed one of Firebird's hands first. Firebird grabbed his fire gun off of his back and shot down a few of the guards who were bull-rushing them, forcing them backwards on the floor. Soon, Bruce had cut through all the ropes, and he saw Selina running by outside the door. He followed, trailed by the others. A spark of flame burst from Firebird's gun a few times, trying to shake the remaining guards.

Selina, the fastest in the group, shook on the handles of the giant concrete door, trying to get it open. More of Dulmacher's men were after them, and Firebird was doing his best to hold them off, burning a line in the ground to create a wall. He saw a wooden pillar holding up the ceiling and burnt it, starting at the base, so it fell on a few of the guards.

"I can't get it open!" Selina yelled.

Alfred hollered, "Get away from the door!"

On cue, Firebird and Exterminator aimed their guns at the hinges of the door and shot at the same time, blowing the concrete straight back onto the rock outside.

The fresh air and salt stung Bruce's face. He ran for the helicopter, seeing their pilot dead on the ground.

"The pilot's dead!" he yelled. Alfred looked over at him, running straight for the chopper. His army days had taught him how to fly.

Selina heard a small grunt, and looked back. Someone had shot Firebird through the head while he was holding off guards. The last few embers of smoke still rose from the nose of his gun as he fell onto the rocks, dead. She heard Bruce scream, "Firebird!" as she looked over and saw another man. He wasn't in a guard uniform, but instead he wore a brown jacket and held a rifle in his hands.

"I'm the Catcher." he said, grinning. "Nice to meet you."

Alfred aimed his handgun faster than Selina had ever seen him, and shot the Catcher through the shoulder. The Catcher jerked back a bit, then reciprocated it with a shot to Alfred's leg. Before he went down, Alfred shot the Catcher in the stomach, making him lurch over on the ground.

Exterminator helped Alfred into the cockpit of the helicopter, Bruce and Selina running into the body. Before the Catcher could get up, Alfred hovered the chopper up above the rocks, and they were gone over the horizon, away from the Dollmaker's island.

Bruce shuffled in his seat, uncomfortable in how much room he had. When Firebird was still alive, it was cramped, and the roominess was a reminder of it. He knew Firebird was an arsonist and a serial killer, but one percent of him was upset that he was dead, after he had been so kind and helpful to them. He took off his gauntlets to free his forearms, rubbing his wrists.

"Hey," Selina said, nudging him. "You okay?"

Bruce nodded a bit, trying to hide his concern with a half-hearted smile. "Yeah."

"You still have to take me on that date we were talking about."

Bruce laughed. "Where do you want to go?"

Gotham city over the horizon was like an oasis. Exterminator told the others that part of his reward for completing the mission was freedom from prison. He was going back to see Amanda Waller to discuss some things, but he would be back to gassing political figures by morning. He half-heartedly promised not to target Bruce Wayne.

Bruce asked to give back the uniforms, but Exterminator shook his head.

"The truth is the government didn't buy those for you." he sighed. "Firebird raided Waller's personal archives and stole them for you. Waller would probably accuse me of stealing them if I took them back. Consider them Firebird's last gift."

Bruce put the jacket with his other clothes, and locked the gauntlets in his basement. Selina had replaced the leather jacket on her regular clothes with the new one Firebird gave her, and gave Bruce her cat suit to lock away. She was beginning to see the usefulness of it. Alfred had gone to a hospital for his leg, and they put a splint on it. He would be able to walk fine in a few weeks.

Bruce, meanwhile, had arranged a meeting with Amanda Waller the next morning. He had to talk to her. He planned all the night before what he was going to say to her, but he knew he could never say any of it in real life.

From the minute he walked into Wayne Enterprises with Alfred behind him, he knew Waller would be waiting in the conference room. Up the elevator and through the hall, he met the stern, unyielding woman sitting at the table.

Remaining stone, she hissed, "Welcome, Mr. Wayne. I'm so glad to see you're okay."

Bruce sat down at the opposite end of the long table, his hands crossed on the table. "I have some questions about our last meeting."

Waller knew what he was going to say. She was silent.

"What did you do with the inmates you took from Arkham?" he asked.

"I told you. I sent them on a mission for the government that they could use to commute their sentences."

"You planted bombs in their necks and sent them on a suicide mission. One of them died."

"I took psychopaths and killers from a nuthouse where they would rot and put them to good use. They are not worthy of compassion. They're animals, and they were treated as such. If they didn't die there, they would most likely have died on one of their crimes and taken innocent lives with them."

"They're human beings, and you sent them to their deaths. The blood of Feng Huan is on your hands."

"And I'm sure the families of those he killed will thank me very soon."

"You lied to me, Ms. Waller. You said you were working a deal with my parents and they died before it could be completed. I looked in my dad's records. They denied it, and then when they died, you got the new head of Wayne Enterprises to sign it. They never condoned such treatment to human beings."

Waller narrowed her eyes. "There is nothing you can do. You think you can take down the U.S. government? I can take all the criminals I want and send them on suicide missions until I die, and as long as the government thinks it's for the interest of the country, no one can stop me. Good day, Mr. Wayne."

Meanwhile, across town, Selina was jumping across rooftops when she happened upon Oswald Cobblepot's nightclub and remembered what Fish had said to her. She jumped down and peered through the window of the club, not seeing anyone inside.

Selina grabbed the door handle and heaved it open, slipping silently inside. It was dark, and no one saw her, so she explored her surroundings a bit, peeking over the walls to look at the giant stage and tables at the center.

A man unclipped a velvet rope, walking up to Selina with his hands behind his back and speaking softly and sternly, "Sorry, club's closed today. You're also underage, so I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Selina remembered him from Fish's old crew and guessed he was Butch Gilzean.

"You're Butch?" Selina asked. Butch nodded, and Selina handed him the envelope out of the pocket of her leather jacket.

Butch weighed it in his beefy hands and examined the signature on the front. "This is Fish's handwriting." he gasped, his hands beginning to tremble. "Where did you get it?"

"Fish gave it to me a few days ago."

Butch sat down on the table nearby and Selina followed him. He opened the envelope as carefully as if he was performing surgery, and pulled out the letter. Selina couldn't see what was written, but Gilzean's fingers trembled as he examined every word in the letter, a tear beginning to well in his eye. He took a sharp breath, resting against the table like he would fall over if he wasn't.

"Fish is alive?" he asked, voice quivering.

Selina nodded. "Yeah, she is."

"And she's okay?"

"Yeah."

Butch kept reading the letter, whispering quietly under his breath, "All you ever wanted was power. Now you can have more of it than you ever thought you would."

"Butch!" yelled Cobblepot, from behind a wall. "Get over here!"

Butch stared back at Selina with a nod. "Thank you."

Selina nodded back, and left for Wayne manor. She climbed the wall of the nightclub and leapt from building to building until she arrived at the mansion, jumping down and walking the rest of the way through the courtyard and finding a tree. It became a routine for her, climbing that tree and jumping to a notch in the wall until she could climb up to Bruce's window. Selina grabbed the windowsill and hoisted herself up until she saw the boy on his bed flipping through a book.

"Hey, kid." she said, sitting herself on the ledge and lifting her legs up over the side. "Ready for our date?"

Bruce looked up from his book, smiling. "Now?"

Selina shrugged. "I thought the spur-of-the-moment would make it more special."

Standing up, Bruce walked over to her until his hand was on her waist. "You know, the offer to stay here still stands."

"I think I'd like that."

"And I've never had a date before, so you'll have to forgive how terrible I am at it."

Selina laughed. "Don't worry. I kind of missed seeing you all awkward and shy. You were so cute."

Bruce started turning red, grinning. "Alright, let's go."

"One condition, though. You have to wear that outfit Firebird gave you on the date, gauntlets and all. I will not be seen in public with a fifteen year old boy dressed like a grandpa."

"Then you have to wear something from my closet. I will not be seen in public with a girl that looks like she's in a motorcycle gang."

Selina gave a feint gasp of shock. "Bruce Wayne, did you just insult me?"

"I guess I did."

"That's my kid." Selina wrapped her arms around Bruce, and the two left for Bruce's closet, finding the right outfit for their night out.

 **Thank you, good night! Thanks for all the support and for sticking with me to the end of this chaos, and more stuff is coming. I have a new ongoing series called Bruce and Cat Adventures in the works that's going to be really big. Meanwhile though, probably before that comes out, I'll be publishing the third installment of the Bruce and Cat series, one that will force Bruce and Selina to answer a question that will secure the future of Gotham city- Who is Ra's al Ghul?**

 **Bruce and Cat: Lazarus, will be out in a few weeks…**


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